04.07.07
Taking Ownership of Files in Windows XP
This is my first entry here. My name in RL is Luke and I am a college student and I work at Best Buy as a Geek Squad Agent. I plan to share some of the very helpful bits of knowledge that I pick up.
The owner of a file or folder in Windows can change any privileges of any users. Taking ownership of a files has a number of uses. I find it most useful when recovery data off of a hard drive. You can get at those files that give you the Access Denied error.
Anyways…First you must disable simple file sharing. You can only disable this in XP Pro. There is different process to take ownership with Home. To disable simple file sharing open My Computer, open the Tools menu and click Folder Options. Open the View tab and uncheck the simple file sharing.
Now you can right click on the folder/driver/file you want to take ownership of and the magical Sercurity tab appears. If you are running XP Home, you can get the Security tab to show up by starting your computer in Safe Mode. You don’t have to worry about turning off Simple File Sharing.
From the Security tab click the Advanced button and go to the Owner tab. Please note that you must be logged in as the user that you to be the owner for the file. Click on the User or Group that you want to be owner and check the Replace owner on subcontainers and object box. If a dialogue box pops up about copying the current privileges do so and copy them.
Now you can back out the security tab and set permissions however you want to the folder. IF you are recovering data give your user at lease Read. I would recommend Full Control. BE CAREFUL when setting permissions. Do not use Deny, its rarely necessary. It IS possible to lock yourself out of the folder permanently if you set the wrong permissions, so I am just saying, Be Careful.
I hope you found my first entry enlightening. I hope to make at least one post month, highlighting something new that I have learned. Thanks for reading!