Folder from old machine. Reset all owners (SYSTEM etc.)?

Current: Win7/64 Ultimate SP1

Ok, I have a game folder from an XP machine that was created by users with admin access, and possibly part of it from Administrator (on that machine).

I think I have two different SYSTEM, etc., owners on my system now.

Because of too many permission problems to elaborate on, and too much futzing around, can I easily (should I?) from every folder and subfolder:

1. Remove the XP generated owners (they're listed in this order):

Authenticated Users
SYSTEM
Administrators
Users

2. Then replace them with my (win7/64Ult) machine's owners:

Authenticated Users
SYSTEM
Administrators
Users

3. (Making sure that the permissions are inherited from parent of course).


I looked at the tutorials here, and I've tried many things, but am still confused as to whether I should

1. Do this from the folder->properties windows
or
2. Use some combination of secedit or cacls

THANKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Huh. Well either no one knows, or it's been answered before, and if it's the latter can someone please point me in the right direction?

My question is perhaps easy to mistake for another one. See the note below.

All of the answers I've googled (from stackoverflow, here, and a number of other places), have come up short.

Note: I'm talking about a true strip-down of ownership and permissions for files inherited from another system (XP). The names are the same, but the user/group ids (the long numbers) are not and I think it's causing trouble with Win7/64 Ultimate.

Thanks!

I recall this thread. Sorry you didn’t receive an answer, but there was another member in a very similar circumstance at the time of this thread’s creation, and, IMO, has worded their situation a little better. I was hoping you’d perhaps draw some answers from there instead, as these kinds of threads take a while to solve.

I feel your OP has fallen victim to the XY problem, that is, where you attempt to explain a solution to your problem rather than your actual problem.

Some actions you insist on carrying out make little sense, for instance, revoking and reapplying permissions for “Authenticated Users”, “SYSTEM”, “Administrators”, and “Users”. These trustees are universally well-known identities across Windows systems. They are generic and not specific to a machine, so removing them only to re-add them again exactly as they were, but using a different machine, would make no difference and just be a long and daunting exercise.


If there is a specific problem you are facing, please provide concise details about this exact problem. Perhaps you may begin by explaining the nature of the trouble you are experiencing here:

tgm1024 said:

[...] I think it's causing trouble with Win7/64 Ultimate.

Pyprohly said:

I recall this thread. Sorry you didn’t receive an answer, but there was another member in a very similar circumstance at the time of this thread’s creation, and, IMO, has worded their situation a little better. I was hoping you’d perhaps draw some answers from there instead, as these kinds of threads take a while to solve.

I feel your OP has fallen victim to the XY problem, that is, where you attempt to explain a solution to your problem rather than your actual problem.

Some actions you insist on carrying out make little sense, for instance, revoking and reapplying permissions for “Authenticated Users”, “SYSTEM”, “Administrators”, and “Users”. These trustees are universally well-known identities across Windows systems. They are generic and not specific to a machine, so removing them only to re-add them again exactly as they were, but using a different machine, would make no difference and just be a long and daunting exercise.


If there is a specific problem you are facing, please provide concise details about this exact problem. Perhaps you may begin by explaining the nature of the trouble you are experiencing here:

tgm1024 said:

[...] I think it's causing trouble with Win7/64 Ultimate.

Your post is well taken, and you're completely correct. That was one crummy post. Unfortunately, from a fault-isolating point of view, this one isn't much better.

Hop down to "SEEMS TO WORK" below if you don't want to read what was bugging me, because apparently I've lost my mind.

After having tried so many different possible solutions, I was essentially asking for a way to punt down to a baseline configuration and add back Win7Ult owners and permissions by hand, because even retracing what I had tried was becoming confusing as hell.

I routinely would copy the XP folder over and try again.

Speaking to the XY problem: I was trying to grant access to accounts other than mine to an old UnrealTournament installation that had been pulled directly from an old XP system. It had been copied to the local drive (from the XP drive accessed by a USB-IDE reader). But I could access the contents of one of its folders from my account (a member of administrators, and the one that did the copy), from Administrator, but not from my wife's account (a member of administrators) nor my Kids account.

I've configured permissions and ownership before with success a few times elsewhere, but this was something I wasn't expecting. When I stripped out the Kids access from the permissions, it was gone. When I added it back, I got two of them. Two. Huh?

I figured I must have had some oddball conflict going on from the XP/Kids and my Win7/Kids, or perhaps some subfolder inheriting from the parent the old XP/Kids once a Win7/Kids permission was added?

I also figured that I knew just enough to be dangerous, and just enough to sledgehammer things back when it was on XP, and it was carrying through to now. However:

The SEEMS TO WORK section

Anyway, I discovered something very recently. I had enabled parental controls on the Kids account, but had not told it to deny anything at all, so I figured it was inert. But on a whim, I disabled parental controls.

1. My wife's account could access the folder. (She was never part of parental controls!)
2. Kids could access the folder.
3. Adding Kids permission specifically to the folder didn't add two Kids permission entries.

The "BUT..." section

The reason I'm still asking about this is because I may soon be in the need of enabling parental controls again, and I don't want to go through all this all over again, so I thought a reasonable approach would be something analogous to the unix chown nobody:nogroup and chmod 000, while removing all inheritance of permissions from parent folders as well.

Just to start at a known baseline and rebuild everything from there.

Layback Bear said:

Just lurking as I do on most threads that Pyprohly post in.

While we wait for Pyprohly could you post exactly what the end results you are looking for?

Make it short and sweat if you can.

The "BUT..." section outlines this. Perhaps a list?

1. I currently have everything behaving (Me/Administrator/Wife/Kids all have access to the UnrealTournament folders originating on the XP machine.

2. I only got this to happen by turning off parental controls. Previously Wife and Kids could not even gain entry to that folder (neither by explorer nor by cmd). My wife was never part of parental controls, and my kids were part of it but had no access denied to anything, so supposedly it should have been inert.

3. I may need parental controls again in the future, so I thought it'd be best to blank out the folder completely as explained in my post above.

Is there something still unclear here?

As I think back, I'm wondering if this is related to the USB<-->IDE interface I was using to siphon the data off of the XP drive. At the time I was receiving many access denied errors and following the directions of some thread (somewhere----I've looked and looked) I had run a series of CACLS cmds directly on the XP drive (while still attached externally).

rvcjew said:

Can you not access your files at all because of this, or your just trying to get rid of the extra users on it?

I was trying to make it so that everyone would have access to the folders, but this would only happen when parental controls were turned off.

Now that parental controls are turned off, the permissions work as expected. But I may need to turn parental controls on again at some point, while still allowing access to the folders and files from anyone.

This is becoming too difficult for me to characterize in a helpful way. I'm getting more and more suspicious that my foray into modifying the xp drive (from within win7) through my USB->IDE interface gadget borked something that carried through to present day. I was following some instructions, perhaps on this site, and it involved more than just CACLS, but I couldn't find it.

I'm also suspicious that just turning on parental controls for Kids makes two Kids users, either just in the UT folders (maybe because they previously had restrictions placed on the original "XP Kids" user now that I think about it) or in general.

Frankly, I feel like I'm wasting everyone's time trying to figure this one out. Either I get a way to reset everything down to brass tacks within the folder (permissions/ownership/inheritance), or I'll have to archive everything using a utility that can ignore permissions and ownership (some ancient tar?) and extract.

I'm afraid to touch anything now that I have it working.