Windows 7: Messed with Documents and Settings Properties/Permissions. Help.

new user. hope i'm posting according to rules. I wanted to change windows 7 (64 bit) security properties and change permissions on the document and settings folder that denied me access. so i went in and messed with everyone, SYSTEM, and Administrators.I can't even tell you which permissions i tried to allow, but SYSTEM at this point has no allow/deny arrows (except a grayed out special permissions check mark); everyone has black ALLOW ARROWS on everything but special permissions is grayed out on DENY; and administrators has all ALLOW BLACK ARROWS on everything but special permissions which has no arrow on allow or deny.



UPSHOT PROBLEM: there's a dialog box that won't close:
it says: (ERROR APPLYING SECURITY) An error occurred while applying security information to: C:\Documents and Setttings. Access is denied.
it has a continue and a cancel button. When i click the cancel button, this dialog pops up: (WINDOWS SECURITY) Stopping the pro9pagation of permission settings leads to an inconsistent state, in which some objects have the settings but others don't. If you made the change by mistake, you should apply the correct change immediately to achieve a consistent state. when i press, OK, the above box pops up again and i can't get out of either error box or Documents and Settings Properties.

Please help.

also, the lock on the documents and settings folder disappeared and now folder looks like it's a shortcut.

thanks,
alison

You are going to get varying advice on this, but I can tell you from experience that what you have done can't be fixed. YOU WILL have to reinstall Windows to get back to a normal, secure installation. There simply is no other way.

You DO NOT need access to Documents and Settings because it is no longer used It is just a pointer to the C:\USERS folder so that older programs continue to function. Don't mess with permissions on folders unless you personally created that folder.

Hello Alison,

You could try doing a system restore at boot using a restore point dated before you made these changes to hopefully undo them and fix this.

If not, then you'll most likely need to reinstall Windows 7 as Lee posted above.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

You guys are wonderful, we can close this thread. i didn't have to do an install; i just changed the user and deleted the messed up user's profile. all is well.

thanks so much!!
alison

That's great news Alison. I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted. Thank you for posting back with your results.