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!

Solution: You don’t have your default printer selected correctly. You probably have Microsoft Office Document Image Writer or Adobe Acrobat Writer selected. To change your default printer go to Start > Control Panel > Printers and Faxes, right-click on your printer and select Set as Default Printer.

Swa Frantzen at the Internet Security Center has found that people visiting their security related website are more likely to use use other browsers than Internet Explorer. He compares this usage to that of a travel site where over 75% of visitors used Internet Explorer. He also has data showing that the visitors to ISC who used Internet Explorer upgraded to version 7 a couple months before the travel site visitors.

He introduces Ruby on Rails and compares it to PHP to illustrate some of its features and some basic syntax. If you are wondering what Ruby and Ruby on Rail is, this is the place to start.