Accidentally "Take Ownership" of the whole "Windows" folder.

I was trying to patch and install non legit Windows 7 themes and long story short, I have installed Take Ownership and had accidentally click "Take Ownership" of the C:/Windows folder and it took ownership or alot of files...

So question is, would it affect anything? Good or bad? So far nothing different happening. Just feeling nervous as there was a whole stretch of files "taken ownership".

Thanks in advance guys!

Run a system restore.

and I just finally got the theme to work ... so far nothing wrong tho.

i wouldn't worry about it. just don't go in there deleting files!

welcome to sevenforums, fleng - it's a shame that Ronald decided to post on your first thread.

Thanks guys, did the system restore, got it restored the 2nd time because the first time restoring failed.. anyhoo everything was ok.

Did a critical Windows update and did the same Windows theme hack again... and having problem with explorer.exe when I try to "open folder" in Free Download Manager and Internet Download Manager.

It keeps popping up with error msg;

explorer.exe application error
The application failed to start (0xc000007b) .

Trying malwarebyte and regcure.. now.

Grimmjow said:

Hello fleng, and welcome to SevenForums:)

Now, for future reference, before applying custom themes, you may want to make system restore point, if something goes wrong, you can roll back the changes right? Backing up the explorer.exe (if you are changing it) is also a good idea. Instead of using universal theme patcher, you may want to check UxStyle - no more patching.
It allows you to apply custom themes without modifying system files.

Rafaeal Rivera has brought UxStyle, the solution consisting of a light-weight system service named Unsigned Themes, complimentary to the Themes service, and a kernel driver, sizing in at ~500k and ~17kb respectfully (beta builds). The service handles the enabling/disabling of custom theme support and the kernel driver handles patching. For 64-bit platforms, the kernel driver is signed with a digital certificate, as required by Microsoft.

So no more manual patches or restarts to take effect, just download and install UxStyle & you are ready to apply or install custom themes. UxStyle supports Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7 and covers both x86 and x64 platforms.

link



This is one of many tuts we have around here that shows how to: Enabling Custom Themes - Windows 7

Enjoy your time here, you'll learn a lot.
cheers

I decided to system restore again due to the explorer.exe error ... and everything looks ok so far. And decided to use UxStyle.

Just wanted to say, this helped me out alot, simple and straightforward.. no going around clicking here and there in Windows System, Just cant get rid of the pesky Windows Start button... but I can live with it... the explorer.exe error is more annoying than the pesky Window start button :).

Thanks again to all those contributed to this here thread! It was very helpful.

Grimmjow said:

You are welcome:) About the start orb, you may want to check this small program: |MG| Windows 7 Start Button Changer 2.6 Download
It's backing up the explorer so you can restore the original one afterwards. Of course, its good to back it up and manually.
cheers

Thanks Grimmjow! That saved alot of time and not touching the explorer.exe :) Thanks alot!