Screwed up /user/<wife> ownerships & permissions (win7)--need to fix

Screwed up /user/<wife> ownerships & permissions (win7)--need to fix

Hi,

Using my wife's PC (yes, my wife's!) I recovered some RAID 0 files but in the process I did a move which unknowingly included a link to all her /user/<wife's name> files and then, just to really mess things up, I changed the ownerships and permissions!

She discovered my screwup when she tried to read her email (Outlook would not start) and get to and logged on to FB!

I'm in deep shit. I've managed (I think) to restore all of her user files but ownerships and permissions are screwed up! What is my best option for fixing this? She has all manner of cookies, favorites, emails, appointments, contacts, plus Roboform passwords and user data... and etc. so simply creating a new user would mean tons of careful file restores. Is there a utility what will fix this mess?

Husband needs to be saved from wrath of wife!!
Rusty

How about a system restore to a point in time before you messed around in it.

change ownership and permission of c:\users\yourwife
ownership should be yourwife (including sub folders ). give full permission to your wife

bassfisher6522 said:

How about a system restore to a point in time before you messed around in it.

Click to expand...

I second this with a resounding !!!! Anytime you make permission changes, it is best to revert to a restore point so the permissions are reset and you do not have to worry about having possibly contaminated/corrupted your system files by changing their permissions.

Edit: Also, changing the permissions of a user folder causes unforeseen consequences with junction points that can cause applications not to install correctly.

I suppose you could click on Computer > Local Disc C:/ , and then open "properties" for each folder you see there and reset it's permissions... parent & child. And then do the same with the "take ownership" operation (note: the Windows folder will take a while to run). Or just do a system restore.

Alternatively, I hear Tristan da Cunha is quite nice this time of year. Tristan da Cunha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Follow Kaktussoft's suggestion. Navigate to c:\users\[wife] and change all permissions and ownership to her. You have to set a few checkboxes to make Windows propagate updated permissions to all subfolders and files but this is easy to figure out once you're looking at the dialogs.

There's absolutely no need to do a system restore nor would it work anyway because system restore doesn't pay any attention to user files.

Solidwave said:

Follow Kaktussoft's suggestion. Navigate to c:\users\[wife] and change all permissions and ownership to her. You have to set a few checkboxes to make Windows propagate updated permissions to all subfolders and files but this is easy to figure out once you're looking at the dialogs.

There's absolutely no need to do a system restore nor would it work anyway because system restore doesn't pay any attention to user files.

Click to expand...

System restore does pay attention to junctions. It just doesn't pay attention to documents and those sets of user folders. Changing permissions on junctions can have nasty side effects.

Edit: I stand corrected, it does not restore junctions (a little shortsighted of Microsoft...), so I guess after the permissions are reset, we will have to be guides in setting those back up as they should be if needed.

Already went to /user/<wife> and changed permissions to what was on my PC, ergo System and user <wife> full permissions and propaggae to all subfolder/files. Actually I'm not sure how to change the ownership... how's this done.

Anyway, Outlook won't start... error message says: Cannot start MS Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. File access to the file C:\Users\Denise Williamson\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst. Also a lot of other things won't work either. Doesn't make sense to me. I think I'll just rename the user then recreate a new user and copy over Outlook's PST files, favs, cookies and other application data files basically rebuilding it.

I have enough problems already with recovering my data from a RAID 0 array.

Thanks for all the responses!!
Rusty

I think it would be the wisest move and will probably save your marriage!

This tutorial and its related links should be of help to you.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/181024-user-account-create.html