Solved Ownership of C Drive (System Drive)

[sereneione]

Hello everyone.

I had some problems with my C drive a few days ago. Scanning the disk revealed multiple bad sectors, and the laptop took a full night to fix itself (it literally scanned the whole night long again and again until the bad sectors were no more). Anyway, it came right in the end, but I was denied access to the C drive. Completely. For example, I could access the files in My Documents folder and the like, but I could not copy them elsewhere. I am the only user of the computer, and my user account is that of an administrator.

So, I poked around the Internet to get some information, and I did a bit of reading about taking ownership and granting permissions. In hindsight, I guess I should have read just a little bit more before doing anything. Anyway, long story cut short, I took ownership of the entire C drive, including its subcontainers and objects, and gave myself full control permission settings.

Now, I no longer have problem accessing the drive and what not, but I am beginning to wonder if it is a good idea to retain this ownership. I would LOVE for the ownership and permissions to revert back to its original settings (when everything was working fine and the bad sectors have not yet appeared), except that I do not know what the original settings are. And unfortunately, I cannot do a System Restore because there are currently no restore points on the system (somehow they have all disappeared after that one night of disk scanning).

I've read from somewhere that by default, the owner of the C drive is TrustedInstaller. However, I've also read from another somewhere that the default owner of the C drive is SYSTEM. And then from somewhere else, it was YOUR_PC_NAME\Administrators as the default owner. Most of them said the one same thing though: not all of the folders/files in the C drive are owned by TrustedInstaller/SYSTEM/etc, therefore it is hard to say whether or not the ownership of the C drive should be TrustedInstaller/SYSTEM/etc.

I am hesitant to do anything further until I am absolutely sure that I will not be messing things up more than I already have. I mean, at the moment I am not having any problems from the ownership, but it has only been a couple of days, so I guess you can argue that something could still happen?

Please, what are all your thoughts on this matter? Should I:

1. Change the ownership of the C drive to TrustedInstaller, along with all the subcontainers and objects within it?
2. Leave the ownership of the C drive as it is, i.e. leave the owner as myself?
3. Take no chances and do a Repair Install?

Please advise.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[Berton]

I don't have answers for the questions but when I start seeing bad sectors and the number of them increases each time checkdisk is run I replace the HDD. Save what your data, anything you created and that exists nowhere else, soon.

 

[Layback Bear]

I did find this
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1911-take-ownership-shortcut-13.html

WARNING, DO NOT TAKE OWNERSHIP of the C: drive!!

Doing so will mess up Windows 7 severely, and you will most likely end up having to reinstall Windows 7 to fix it.

 

[LMiller7]

You have a serious problem and I don't see any easy solutions.

It is true that the normal owner of the C: drive is TrustedInstaller. But, and this is very important, that only applies to the root and selected subfolders. Many subfolders have and require other owners.

Please, what are all your thoughts on this matter? Should I:

1. Change the ownership of the C drive to TrustedInstaller, along with all the subcontainers and objects within it?
2. Leave the ownership of the C drive as it is, i.e. leave the owner as myself?
3. Take no chances and do a Repair Install?

#1 Would be the worst possible. That would make things much worse.
#2 This would compromise security and probably have other problems as well.
#3 I don't know if this would do any good. It would not entirely solve the problem.

Taking ownership is easy but reverting the changes is another matter. Windows does not keep any kind of ownership history so all changes would need to be explicit. At the very least that would require a great deal of time.

The best solution would be to restore the drive from a recently created image backup. I am assuming this is not possible. Failing that the only real solution I can see is to backup all your data and do a clean install of the OS. As the drive had a large number of bad sectors that could mean the drive is failing and would need to be replaced.

Maybe someone has a less drastic solution. I don't feel qualified to suggest anything else.

 

[sereneione]

System Image Backup

Hello again everyone. Thanks for your replies. Really appreciate it.

As a matter of fact, I DO have a recent system image backup. Perhaps I shall do that. I also have backup copies of the things that I treasure most in the C drive (as soon as I got access to it by changing the ownership), so I guess I've got nothing to lose. Just a lot of time.

I will post an update on this matter. In the meantime, please, feel free to share more thoughts and suggestions.

Thanks!

 

[sereneione]

Update

Hello again everyone.

So I've restored the drive and everything is back with their rightful owners. But I think my hard disk is really dying on me. Either that, or some dodgy stuff (not picked up by Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware) is running in the background causing significant lagging of the whole system.

Is there a program that can run while my laptop is running and then produces a report which tells me what is running in the background? Or, is the culprit actually Malwarebytes?

All suggestions welcome. In the meantime, thanks to everyone who helped with the ownership issue.

 

[Layback Bear]

Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes are not using to much of your resources.
A good place to start looking is msconfic/Startup.

Could you post a picture from your system like this.

Use this tutorial by Brink to post a snap shot.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[sereneione]

Startup

Hello Layback Bear.

Here are the screenshots:




You don't think any of these would be the culprit... do you?

 

[Layback Bear]

To me that is a problem. I don't own a laptop so I can't give a lot of help.
I got one check mark and you got a boat load.

Take a read through this Tutorial by Gregrocker.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/219576-clean-up-factory-bloatware.html

 

[sereneione]

Hello.

I have disabled half of those entries. Still the same. It was never a problem until recently, so I don't think it's them.

Anyway, thanks all for your help. Really appreciate it.

 

[MrNeeds]

I recently had a similar problem, windows 8 commandeered my C drive and refused to give me authority to move and edit files, it's complicated to fix but brink posted a very helpful tutorial on how to re-commandeer the files back, I'll edit this post with a link when I find it.

Edit:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/122666-permissions-allow-deny-users-groups.html

 

[PIAOWAKA]

To layback bear

That is not true what you said. I have had Win 7 Ult 64 bit since it came out. I did take over the entire computer and took Trusted Installer out. I have not have any trouble since. Pia

 

[RolandJS]

If one is having bad sectors reports, HDTune, HardDisk Sentinel, or anything similar can give SMART reports that "tell" how far or how close HDD failure is likely. Best to replace HDD, re-image everything onto new HDD from the backup external device.