Re: XP Folder Ownership Problems, Permissions, Inheritances

From: Kent Peters (Kent-Peters@houston.rr.com)
Date: 06/08/02 

From: "Kent Peters" <Kent-Peters@houston.rr.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Jun 2002 02:27:12 -0500

OK, I can change the ownership of all my root folders to "Administrators".
But, how do I either reset all permissions and inheritances to their
original default settings (and what are the default settings) OR strip all
my folders and files of their security settings?
I've read several MS Support articles on this stuff but they all dance
around fine points. I don't understand the big picture. XP has "Ownership",
" Permissions", "Inheritances", Users can have certain levels of security
clearance AND folders & files can certain security levels. I don't
understand how they all work together or how to reset everything to their
default settings. What overrides what? What is the structure that defines
precedence when both file level and user level security are set? Can you
recommend something I could read on this? The Qxxxxxx articles never present
the big picture.

For what every reason, this is the problem I am having now. If I make the
owner Administrators, MS Word won't work when I log in as Kent. If I make
the owner KENT, MSWord won't work when I log in at Administrator. It's
veryyyyyy frustrating. I reset permissions, inheritances, and owners until I
am blue in the face, but the problem persists. What can I do ?

"Kent W. England [MVP]" <kwe@mvps.org> wrote in message
news:OSPga9cDCHA.2232@tkmsftngp04...
> My original advice to the original poster was aimed at gaining access to
> an orphaned folder. I have no idea why you are changing your system
> folder permissions. Those aren't orphaned because they are owned by a
> well-known SID, the Administrators group.
>
> All of your root folders should be owned by Administrators. This is good
> because it prevents the orphaned folder problem in the first place.
> Change the ownership back to Administrators group. It's OK for your user
> profile folders to be owned by Administrators. As long as you didn't
> change any of the permissions, it doesn't matter who the owner is.
>
> --
> Kent W. England, MS MVP for Windows XP
> (Please respond only in the newsgroup)
>
> Kent Peters <kent-peters@houston.rr.com> posted the following:
>
> > Hi Kent, this is Kent. OK let's focus on the ownership
> > issue. I have 4 Users: Administrator, Kent, Natalia,
> > Jacqueline. The Administrator account is mine as is Kent,
> > both of which have Administrator privledges. Natalia and
> > Jacqueline are Users. I've figured out how to take
> > ownership. The problem is I don't know who the default
> > owners are supposed to be! Most of my root folders were
> > owned by Administrators, so I changed the ownership to
> > Kent. What are the default "out of the box" ownership
> > settings? I need to know this for the following folders:
> > Windows, Program Files, Documents and Settings, Documents
> > and Settings\Kent, Documents and Settings\Natalia,
> > Documents and Settings\Administrator, AND any old root
> > folder that was created from any install I have done such
> > as C:\Cyberpwr ?
> > My confusion lies in that my entire C:\drive is messed
> > up. Are you telling me to change the ownership of every
> > folder, subfolder, and file on my C:\ drive to Kent ?
> > Because I screwed all of them up. What would the default
> > ownership normally be for the above mentioned folders ?
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> Taking ownership is the first step. You may need to add permissions
> >> after taking ownership. However, the procedure you describe was not
> >> what I recommended you to do. My recommendation is to do what the
> >> Help and Support Center recommends by logging on to the appropriate
> >> account, opening the security tab for the affected folder, and
> >> taking ownership and changing permissions on the affected groups, or
> >> adding groups to the permissions, which you know how to do.
> >>
> >> At this point, I need to see a cacls output for the folder in
> >> question.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Kent W. England, MS MVP for Windows XP
> >> (Please respond only in the newsgroup)
> >>
> >> Subzero <subzeronyc@hotmail.com> posted the following:
> >>
> >>> From the looks of things a lot of us are having problems taking
> >>> control of permissions for whatever reason (see below) and there
> >>> seems to be no easy way to accomplish our goal. I know all about
> >>> permissions and inheritances and none of that worked for me even
> >>> though the problematic folder tells me I own it as an administrator;
> >>> access is still denied. There has to be a way to strip these
> >>> folders of these problematic rights. Any thoughts would be greatly
> >>> appreciated
> >>>
> >>> Posted by Kent:
> >>> I encountered a similiar problem with XP Pro. Everything
> >>> worked. Then I converted my primary drive to NTFS and made My
> >>> Documents private. Then something happened and I reformated and
> >>> reinstalled XP Pro on the NTFS drive. When I copied back My
> >>> Documents from my backup drive, XP kept telling me Access Denied,
> >>> even though I created them and I am an Administrator. Well, don't
> >>> follow my lead because I temporarily made things even worse (but
> >>> now better). First, I re-applied the Setup Security Template in MMC,
> >>> thinking it would reset all permissions. It did for all
> >>> the XP system type files but did not affect My Documents.
> >>> So I copied the Setup Security Template and added Admin permissions
> >>> to Documents And Settings. Then I was really hosed. All my Office
> >>> XP apps stopped working telling me I wasn't a user and to reinstall
> >>> (reinstalling didn't help).
> >>> Somehow there must be an easy way to Remove All Security and
> >>> Permissions on all non-systems files but I haven't found it. I am
> >>> sure the answer lies in applying the
> >>> correct security template. Odd thing, whenever I try to
> >>> change security by right mouse clicking on a folder or
> >>> file in Windows Explorer, the permissions and change owner check
> >>> boxes are always grayed out. So, I have been unable to assume
> >>> ownership. HELP !
> >>>
> >>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>> Taking ownership doesn't work. I have a similar problem because I
> >>>> lost about 100 files of varying types by doing the same thing. I
> >>>> can see them on the hard drive as the specific file type (Word doc,
> >>>> Access db or whatever) but when I try to open them it tells me I
> >>>> don't have permission even though I am the administrator and only
> >>>> user of this computer. I'm always tweaking this computer and
> >>>> normally backup the contents of My Docs by copying the files to an
> >>>> additional hard drive but this time I was lazy and copied the
> >>>> Documents and Settings folder before doing a complete new
> >>>> installation of WinXP Pro because I'd replaced my CPU and
> >>>> motherboard, and even though I always use the same l {wftF-
> >>>> P"g~O#- 'og-on, it doesn't allow me to gain control of files
> >>>> in this folder.
> >>>>
> >>>> Thoughts appreciated on how to gain access to these files because
> >>>> most of them are very important and I need access to them.
> >>>>
> >>>> "David Yeshulas" <DYeshulas@attbi.com> wrote in message
> >>>> news:eL
>

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