Setting user name on folders

richc46 said:

Make a new user account and copy and paste the information from the folders

Dont forget the hidden folders
Hidden Files and Folders - Show or Hide

I'm not making any new users that would just add even more dead accounts all over.

And what do you mean "information from the folders" copy the files which are in them? That would take forever, and I don't have the space to copy everything.

@Epicenter, you can take ownership of the folders in question, no need to create more accounts

Here is a tweak that puts Take Ownership into the explorer context menu, have a look at it, maybe it will help.

Or you can do what I did, right click each of the old drives in explorer, select properties, select the security sheet and use its dialogues to make the changes.

I killed off UAC whilst I was doing this, saves all that Run as Admin crap and having tell Windows to get on with doing what you just asked it to do.

It will take a few minutes on each drive because it has to update the security data streams in each & every file & folder on the drive.

When you've done, you can set UAC back to its "normal" setting.

pjd

pjd said:

@Epicenter, you can take ownership of the folders in question, no need to create more accounts

Here is a tweak that puts Take Ownership into the explorer context menu, have a look at it, maybe it will help.

Yeah, except no - I found the "takeown" command and thought I was set, so i ran it on all drives. Except that doesn't really work either - I "own" the folder, but that doesn't mean I necessarily have access to it! (I hate this supposed "security", it doesn't do anything to add security for me, it only hinders my usage of my computer and annoys me)

pjd said:

Or you can do what I did, right click each of the old drives in explorer, select properties, select the security sheet and use its dialogues to make the changes.

I killed off UAC whilst I was doing this, saves all that Run as Admin crap and having tell Windows to get on with doing what you just asked it to do.

It will take a few minutes on each drive because it has to update the security data streams in each & every file & folder on the drive.

Yeah, except that doesn't work either.

I did try that before posting here, but it didn't do the recursive dance properly - ie, there are still sub sub sub folders, where i'm not in the user group list.

(I'm not sure what the right term is, when you select properties\security it lists names and groups in "group or user names" - apparently my user name needs to be there before i can copy files etc to the folder)

On the page richc46 linked to Brink suggests using icacls.

I tried using that, but and it does add my username to the folders but it doesn't add any actual permissions, (as in full control/read/modify etc - nothing is checked) - and it doesn't remove the dead users from the entry.

sigh.


Thanks for your assistance though.

Grrr, now I'm trying to save a text file from my editor and I get the message "A required privilege is not held by the client"! What the heck does that mean and how do i get that 'required privilege'

Brink said:

Hello EpiCenter,

PLEASE STOP...

You're getting this error because you took ownership of the whole C: drive,

Too late now.

Brink said:

or some mistake was made with your "S-1-5-21 etc" registry entries. You should never do this.

I haven't edited the register for "S-1 etc" since as I said it was on folders (and not in this registry)

Brink said:

Do a system restore using a restore point dated before you did this to undo it. If you do not have a restore point available, then you may need to do a repair install.

I'll reinstall if it seems necessary. For now i disabled UAC.

Brink said:

You cannot change the actual name of the C:\Users\(user-name) folder in Windows.

I never asked about that in this thread.

I do find it odd though, that the system could be screwed up because the owner wants to be owner.

Also, as I mentioned further up in this thread - when I took ownership of some other folders that didn't mean I could actually access them - because apparently there is a difference between being an owner and having access.

Brink said:

The only way around this would be to create a new administrator account with the name you like, then copy all of the contents of the old user account's C:\Users\(user-name) folders (including hidden AppData folder) into the corresponding new account's C:\Users\(user-name) folder. After everything checks out ok in the new account, you can delete the old user account while logged in the new user account.

I had previously moved that to another drive.

@Epicenter - sorry mate, my bad, twice over too

1. I assumed we were talking about drives other than C:

2. I should have suggested that your win7 login id take Ownership and have Full Control of the data drives/directories.

If you reinstall I suggest you give Windows and application software a dedicated drive, 100G should be plenty. Keep all your data on a separate drive(s), don't bother with My Documents, My Pictures etc - leave them in the default locations on drive C: and use them sparingly where you've no other choice - but don't keep anything there permanently.

pjd