How to Take Ownership and Full Control Permissions of Files & Folders in Windows

A lot of files and folders in Windows 7 & Vista does not actually belongs to users. Rather, most system files have “Trusted Installer” as owner, the assign or grant read+write, traverse or full control permissions to SYSTEM or CREATOR OWNER user account only. So users must take ownership and grant full access control permissions and rights to themselves if they want to modify, rename or delete these files or folders. Sometimes, users may need to take ownership and grant full rights to themselves on another drive or partition, especially on disk newly installed or inserted if they cannot browse the contents from the drive.

To take ownership and grant full control (or read write) permissions of files or folders in Windows Vista, do these steps.

1. In Windows Explorer window, locate the files or folders that you want to take ownership and grant or change full control or other access permissions.
2. Right click on the file or directory, and then select Properties on the right click menu.



3. Click on Security tab.
4. Click on Advanced button at the bottom.



5. In “Advanced Security Settings” dialog window, click on Owner tab.
6. Here you will be able to see current owner (i.e. TrustedInstaller). To take ownership of the object, click on the Edit button. If UAC prompts for administrator’s password or permission to continue, enter the correct password or press Continue button.



7. Additional “Advanced Security Settings” dialog will appear. Highlight the user name (for example, Administrators) in the Change owner to box that you want to assign as the owner for the object. Click OK to make the change.



8. Back in original parent level “Advanced Security Settings” window, you will see the existing owner of the file or folder has changed to the user you just selected.
9. Click OK button to exit this window.
10. Click OK again to exit completely from the Properties window.
11. The ownership is now belonged to user or user account that been selected. To assign necessary permissions to the user too, repeat step 1 to 3 to open the object’s Properties window again.
12. In object’s Properties window, click on Edit button to change permissions. If UAC prompts for administrator’s password or permission to continue, enter the correct password or press Continue button.



13. Highlight the Administrators or the user who wants the permissions on the object be changed in the “Group or user names” box.

If the user ID or group that you want to manage the permissions for the object doesn’t exist, click on Add button, and type in the user name or group name desired into the Enter object names to select box, and finish off by clicking on OK.
14. In the Permissions for Administrators box below (or any other user name or group name you chose), click on “Full Control” under the “Allow” column to assign full access rights control permissions to Administrators group.



15. Click “OK” twice when done.

Users can now do whatever you like to the files or directories processed as above. If you feel that above process is a little too long, and prefer to use command line to perform above process, then open an elevated command prompt as administrator, and issues the following commands:

For Files:

takeown /f file_name /d y
icacls file_name /grant administrators:F

For Folders or Directories (will perform action recursively):

takeown /f directory_name /r /d y
icacls directory_name /grant administrators:F /t

Replace file_name or directory_name with actual file name or folder name, with path when applicable. The first command will take ownership of the file or folder specified, and the second command will grant full control permissions to administrators user group. Note that when using command for folders, to command will run recursively. To prevent the task been perform recursively, remove the “/r” and “/t” switch.

Above two commands have been scripted in Windows command shell batch script that easily perform the task of taking ownership and grant full control permissions to Administrators user group by typing simple command. Alternatively, users can add “Take Control Of” option to right click menu so that the next time you need to take control of a file with full control permissions, it’s just a one click task.

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MEHUL PATEL - www.FB.me/GujaratiKanudo

ReFS : Next Generation File System for Windows

We wanted to continue our dialog about data storage by talking about the next generation file system being introduced in Windows 8.  Today, NTFS is the most widely used, advanced, and feature rich file system in broad use. But when you’re reimagining Windows, as we are for Windows 8, we don’t rest on past successes, and so with Windows 8 we are also introducing a newly engineered file system. ReFS, (which stands for Resilient File System), is built on the foundations of NTFS, so it maintains crucial compatibility while at the same time it has been architected and engineered for a new generation of storage technologies and scenarios. In Windows 8, ReFS will be introduced only as part of Windows Server 8, which is the same approach we have used for each and every file system introduction. Of course at the application level, ReFS stored data will be accessible from clients just as NTFS data would be. As you read this, let’s not forget that NTFS is by far the industry’s leading technology for file systems on PCs.
This detailed architectural post was authored by Surendra Verma, a development manager on our Storage and File System team, though, as with every feature, a lot of folks contributed. We have also used the FAQ approach again in this post.
--Steven
PS: Don't forget to track us on @buildwindows8 where we were providing some updates from CES. 

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Troubleshoot File and Folder Permission Issues in Windows 7 | 8

Some of the main problem we face with Windows 7 and Windows 8, is its permissions issues! Most of them think its annoying. Here are a few tips which will help resolve such issues.

Most of the time you might find difficult opening files from a external hard drive after upgrading to Windows 7. Such cases you could try to give permission to that folder.

1. Most of the times the folder permission or the Owner would be set to “Trusted Installer” such cases you’ll get this message that “You don’t currently have permission to access this folder”.

When you click on Continue it will say access denied and try again.

In such cases you could Take Ownership of the folder or file to open it or to get access to it. There are various methods to Take Ownership. The easiest way is to use the Take Ownership Shortcut on Context Menu.

To download this registry fix, visit WinVistaClub – or better still, download and use Ultimate Windows Tweaker to add it easily to your right click context menu.

One important thing you have to remember about this is that you should use it wisely. The reason I am stressing this point is, because I have seen lot of situation where people will try to Take Ownership of System files or folders. Altering permission might cause your System to crash.

For instance, you might see Document and Settings folder under C drive of Windows 7 computer. People who have upgraded from Windows XP, might be not know about “Users” instead of Document and Settings. So if they try to access it and will get the permission error. Document and Settings it’s just a junction point for compatibility with older programs. Always stay away from Windows, Program Files etc.

2. Let’s say you gave permission but it still fails to open or edit. The next thing I would do is turn off UAC or User Account Control. Sometime UAC might block permission. Make sure to turn it back on once you have carried out the change.

How to Disable User Account Control?

1. Click the Windows Start button and then click Control Panel. The Control Panel appears
2. Select Large icons on the right-hand side under the View by menu (if you are not already in Large icons view). This will display the Control Panel features as icons. Locate and click on User Accounts.
3. The User Accounts panel appears.
4. Click the Change User Accounts Control Settings option. The User Accounts Control Settings dialog box appears.
5. Windows 7 UAC settings have a slider to change between different notification levels
6. Change to Never notify

Note: A reboot of the computer will be required after choosing this setting.

Once you complete your Task change the slider to “Notify me only when programs try to make changes to my computer”.

3. If disabling that UAC didn’t do the trick, the next steps is to Enable the Built-in administrator account. Built-in Administrator is a hidden administrator account on Windows 7, which is created while installing the OS. There will be no restrictions under this account. Make sure you disable it after using it.

How to Enable Built-in Administrator account?

1. Click the Windows Start button and type in CMD
2. Right Click on CMD and click on Run as administrator
3. Command prompt will open up then type in

net user administrator /active:yes

Hit Enter you’ll get a message “Command ran successfully”
Type net user administrator <Password> and then press ENTER.
Note: Please replace the <Password> tag with your passwords which you want to set to administrator account.

To disable the administrator account

 net user administrator /active:no

4. If that fails then something is wrong with your Operating System. Sometimes registry settings might get messed up. In those cases we could try to reset the default security permissions.

1) Click the Windows Start button and type in CMD
2) Right Click on CMD and click on Run as administrator
3) Command prompt will open up then type in

secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

Check this Microsoft KB313222 for more info about this command.

Restart the computer and test it.
 
5. If that doesn’t help then try to run the System File Checker.

1. Click the Windows Start button and type in CMD
2. Right Click on CMD and click on Run as administrator
3. Command prompt will open up then type in SFC /SCANNOW
4. If none of the above steps helped then you might be looking at a corrupted operating system. Try to run a Repair Install or a Clean Install.

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MEHUL PATEL / www.FB.me/GujaratiKanudo