fixing ownership and permissions when its a damn mess

[Nvidiaguy07]

Had problems before with this, but i was able to change ownership enough to delete or move whatever I had to at the time.

The hard drive is still a mess (been through many OS reinstall and versions of windows), and I'd like to just fix everything so it doesnt piss me off anymore.

My problem:

In my storage hard drive, I have one folder called Storage that everything is in. Within this folder, a ton of this give me access denied BS and i have to click continue whenever I delete or move something.

The first thing i see is that read only is partially checked, so i uncheck it and tell it to apply to this folder, sub folder and files. After applying, its right back where it was before, so this does nothing.

I then click the folder and go to properties. Looking under the security tab, i have these listed in group or user names:
Everyone
Authenticated users
SYSTEM
Adiminstrators
Users
(all have everything checked and full control)

Under the advanced tab administrators is listed as owner

under permissions its a bigger mess
permission entries are:
authenticated users
everyone
users
administrators
system
authenticated users
users
(full control for all except last two which are modify and read and execute respectively)

WTF should i be putting as owner? Lou? Administrators? SYSTEM? USERS? and even then I dont think everything is being changed even when i check "replace all child object....."

I just want to make everything mine and fix this goddam mess of owners and bullshit.

Any advice on how to do this the right way will be appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, error message im getting is "file access denied Youll need to provide administrator permission to delete this file". I am the mfing administrator and I made myself the owner. I dont see why i have to click continue everytime. UAC is off BTW.

 

[Ketchup]

A few thoughts:

How many user accounts have written to this drive? Have you tried editing the properties for folders from within those user accounts?

Do you have different user accounts with the same name writing to this drive? I have heard that Windows can be quite confused when this occurs.

Make sure you are editing the permission of the highest level folder. If a subfolder is allowed write access, but the containing folder doesn't have write access, nothing will happen when trying to change the subfolder.

There are two types of Administrators - users with Administrator privileges and the real Administrator. The latter will be the strongest source to do what you want without issue. See here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/507-built-administrator-account-enable-disable.html

There is a program called Unlocker. I haven't personally used it, but I have heard good things:
http://www.filehippo.com/download_unlocker/

 

[Bubbaleone]

Use the SubInACL tool to repair all of the file and registry permissions on your storage drive as outlined by MSDN's Aaron Stebner. This is an excellent subinacl script that I've successfully used many times for fixing the exact problem you're having. This script will set full access permissions in the registry, as well as all folders, subfolders and files, in one shot. Just be aware that you'll need to modify the script wherever it says "YOURUSERNAME" to what your actual user name is.

 

[Ketchup]

Use the SubInACL tool to repair all of the file and registry permissions on your storage drive as outlined by MSDN's Aaron Stebner. This is an excellent subinacl script that I've successfully used many times for fixing the exact problem you're having. This script will set full access permissions in the registry, as well as all folders, subfolders and files, in one shot. Just be aware that you'll need to modify the script wherever it says "YOURUSERNAME" to what your actual user name is.

Cool. I was wondering if MS had something like that, as I see people having issues like this all the time at work and in the forums.

 

[Bubbaleone]

@ Nvidiaguy07...I forgot to mention a very important detail. Note the last line in the script:

subinacl /subdirectories %windir%\ /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=e >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt

You'll see that it's pointing to C:\Windows\ (%windir%\). You need to add that same line to the end of the script, but modified to point to your storage volume. For example, if your storage volume is D:\, then the line you'll add would look like this:

subinacl /subdirectories D:\ /grant=administrators=f /grant=system=f /grant=users=e >> %temp%\subinacl_output.txt

@ Ketchup... you're right, and when I found this script several years ago I've been using it ever since. It takes the labor intensive process of having to manually edit all the permissions on an entire drive, and turns it into a five minute automated process.

.

 

[denis280]

Cool. I was wondering if MS had something like that, as I see people having issues like this all the time at work and in the forums.

Agree.nice to know.thanks Bubba.:thumbsup:

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

Awesome. When I get home later I'll give it a shot and report back. Hopefully this is what Ive been looking for for all these years.

 

[slag]

Did it work?