How to reset ownership/permissions for entire hard drive?

[Trevelyan]

I'm not sure how this happened, but my hard drive which stores My Documents has gotten all of the owner and permissions messed up. Certain folders I can't rename or delete because I get permission denied errors.

I've tried to take ownership, and then add permissions for my user, but it's all messed up. Is there any script or program that can just do this for me?

 

[Trevelyan]

Oh sorry, I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3

 

[MadRat]

I've seen a bad profile with Admin rights causes a problem that looked like permissions were all messed up. Recreating the admin account profile fixed it.

 

[TheKub]

Right click on My Documents -> properties -> security tab -> advanced button -> owner tab -> Select your account -> check the "replace owner on subcontainers and objects" box -> OK button.

 

[dphantom]

I've used the script below before. It calls CACLS, a MS tool.

Warning: Provided as is without warranty expressed or implied. Use at own risk.

Function SetPermissions()
Dim strHomeFolder, strHome, strUser
Dim intRunError, objShell, objFSO

strHomeFolder = "C:\Test"

Set objShell = CreateObject("Wscript.Shell")
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If objFSO.FolderExists(strHomeFolder) Then
intRunError = objShell.Run("%COMSPEC% /c Echo Y| cacls " _
& strHomeFolder & " /e /c /g everyone:F ", 2, True)

If intRunError <> 0 Then
Wscript.Echo "Error assigning permissions for user " _
& strUser & " to home folder " & strHomeFolder
End If
End If
End Function

or, just do as TheKub says.

 

[Trevelyan]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I'm going to give it a try.