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Down the Rabbit Hole of Access Control - Help!
I seem to have made a change to the Access Control settings for a protected directory and I cannot revert it back to its original settings. I'm not sure exactly how I made this change occur, but I've tried everything I can to return it to its default settings, including doing a System Restore. But nothing works.
So now, at the very least, I'm trying to get a handle on whether or not these changed settings even matter.
Just to add a little context, what I was in the process of doing was trying to figure how to customize what's appearing in my Start Menu, like one could do in the XP world. Apparently, getting to that same endpoint is not so easy with 7.
Here are the details:
After unhiding protected os files in Windows Explorer, I made my way to {C:\ProgramData\Application Data} and of course, I couldn't get any further (access denied).
So, I right-clicked on {Application Data} and then: Properties » /Security\ and listed under "Group or user names:" were the following:
Everyone
SYSTEM
Administrators (‹machine_name›\Administrators)
Under "Permissions for Administrators," only Special permissions had a checkmark -- a faded one, under the Allow column.
I say "were" and "had" because now Administrators... is gone, seemingly forever?!
I did try to get a little further by selecting [Advanced] » /Owner\ » [Edit] and then selecting (or typing in) my admin-class account ID (via the [Other users or groups...] button), and taking over ownership of that directory. I was able to accomplish that, but it didn't really do any good; i.e., it didn't give me read/write access to the directory and it didn't allow me to restore the Administrators... listing on the /Security\ page.
That's it for the details. Thanks for bearing with me.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to accomplish my original goal: tweak what appears in the Start Menu. And whether or not I end up being able to do that, I'd like to be able to then return a directory's access permissions profile to its original state.
One more thing before I (mercifully!) end this post: in the course of trying to figure this out, I came upon a statement in the Win7 help documentation that may hold the key to what I'm after. It said, "Assigning ownership of a file or a folder might require you to elevate your permissions by using User Access Control." This seems promising, but I can't seem to find Help info on how to elevate my permissions.
Okay... that's it. Thanks for bearing with the long read.
Any help on this, will of course, be greatly appreciated.
--Thri