Windows 10: I Changed Ownership of Most of C: - Do I need immediate help?

Trying to find out how to get to be able to write a .bat file to C: in order to install and use harbour I came to these forums and started reading about other people who couldn't write to their hard drives.

With various solutions offered.

One of which said change all ownerships of C:

Which I did - or got started on it - and then I browsed over to another solution at https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html where I read warning in red:



Warning


Do not change the owner of your Windows drive (ex: C: ). Doing so could result in Windows becoming very unstabl

So now I'm in trouble.

How do I get out of it? I stopped the change when it was still in progress.

C: currently shows 'SYSTEM' as owner.

p.s. still can't save from notepad++ to c:
I'm logged on a the sole user/administrator as usual

:)

 

I need help getting ownership of my boot c drive

What you found is a restriction that Microsoft introduced many years ago with Windows 7: While UAC (User Account Control) is at its default level it will not let you save files to the root of the System partition. You have two choices:

• Disable UAC (not recommended)
• Save the files to a folder off the root.

 

I need help getting ownership of my boot c drive

I have been having an issue for the past 24 hours with the permissions on my C (Boot) drive in Windows 10 Home. I found myself saving almost everything to my 2 TB extra hard drive and decided I wanted to save my Curse Client directly in the c drive without
a folder, just the files. When I tried to save without a folder in my c drive, a popup appeared informing me that I didn’t have the correct privelage to save there. I thought this was weird so I clicked start and sure enough I was still an administrator! I
initially thought this was an issue on Curse's end so I decided to test my theory by attempting to save a regular dot txt file to my boot drive. This worked but only if I saved it to a folder on the drive, I couldn't just save the file directly to the c drive
without a folder which I COULD do on my 2 tb hard drive. I didn’t really know what to do and attempted to change ownership of the c drive through properties>advanced>change(Right beside “owner”) and then I saw that the owner was “trustedinstaller” I seeked
to change this through adding my name and it worked! However, when I tried to apply the change to all folders and subfolders, I got hundreds of messages that I had to click through such as “values could not be enumerated in bla bla bla file”, “you don’t have
the privelages for bla bla bla”, “ you cant change this becauase an instance of bla bla bla is already running”. I made sure everything in task manager was off and ultimately decided to reboot on a clean install of windows from my thumb drive. I did reboot
and deleted and reformated my SSD boot drive. Upon entering windows I thought my problem was solved. To test if it worked, I opened a notepad file and typed some gibberish then tried to save as to my c drive without creating a file. This, did not work and
gave me the same message about “you don’t have the privelages to save here”. I gave up for the night and upon waking up this morning, I wanted to see if I could do something before going to class so I turned on the computer only to find that I can't click
the start button or search at all! After clicking them, nothing happens. I really don’t know what to do but I do have another SSD availible that I can try if the drive is the problem. Please give me some suggestions

 

It depends what you changed and how mny folders were cant you save files to?

 

I couldn't save to C: was the only place. my documents, etc,. everything was okay

can I step back somehow? does it make automatic restore points ? I know I haven't tried to make any.

I installed it on a new 1T drive. I should have partitioned the drive 50/50 right then I guess. don't remember it giving me the option. but almost straight away got hassles with it telling me c: was the system drive... starts off not wanting to show you the contents for instance and you have to alter that...

 

The only practical way to "solve" this type of issue is the re-install windows, or possibly an Inplace upgrade which should reset most security permissions

This is even more the case with each issue of windows with the use of specialist user accounts such as trusted installer.

You may get away with it for a while, but you will be running with a compromised security model and thus more vulnerable to possible malware attacks, so it's best to "bite the Bullet as soon as it's convenient, make sure you keep regular external backups of your data just in case the worst happens

 

there's no 'check' software that i can run that will see if things are seriously wrong or not?

.originally it was pure. new system. three months ago maybe.

.i was operating as admin. sole user.

. i think i tried to change ownership to my username (still admin rank - the only admin user)
but i don't think that took. because nothing happened. no windows, no messages, nothing.

. but when i decided to change it back (because it didn't work, still couldn't save a file) to system i got a message window and details of files being processed whirring past...

.as it was proceeding i suddenly realised that many things might become system owned that shouldn't be..

. so i stopped it.

. and somewhere in there I also saw that warning post on these forums.

so it is possible that all i effectively did was attempt to change to system stuff that already was system -

and change other 'private' stuff to system.

how bad could that be? surely not as bad as changing system stuff to private? different ballgame, surely?

saw amongst the posts someone talking about using kaspersky and switching it to 'windows' mode or something - and it looks for windows faults.. could that be a checker?

i've just spent three weeks slowly and painfully ( as usual ) identifying required software and installing it here in order to build the workstation I want... now any sort of reinstall is going to scrap all of that, isn't it?

 

What cmd did you issue and did you run it as admin ie right click and choose run as admin. Its possible it didnt take but we cant be sure. Its common not to be able to write to c:\ system owns it and admin has rights but users dont have write and as admin is part of users it cant write to it its so oyou cant screw up system files in the root

 

I didn't issue a command. I chose the option somewhere in the screens. Security file managing.

A couple of things have already popped up. I went to log in to one prog and it said the password was no good because there must not be any spaces or special characters. The thing is: I didn't put any spaces or special characters.

And then just now I'm trying to use visual studio and a similar thing happens. It will not accept a filename or something I was doing there because it didn't like the input. But the input wasn't what it was saying it was.

Something screwing up between the keyboard buffer and the progs. Unless that's a pure coincidence and the system's alright but the keyboard has gone mad.... but it's writing all this alright, isn't it?

I think it looks like a complete reinstall.

that's a lot of work to lose. not much data but a hell of lot of installing and configuring.

perhaps I can do a new install on this same disk but have it partition the disk first and then install on the empty partition.

It has 800 gig free of 1 Tera. If I split that. Give it 400 gig. Then at least I'll have all my install files right there, them that are downloads.

christ. just because bloody win10 wouldn't let me write a batch file to c:. Even when I'm the admin. And the only user. And the owner of the whole thing. Etc..

Just had a look and I can shrink the drive and partition to get a free 400gig which I could put another win10 on.

That leaves the boot partition still on that drive. How will that go? I'll boot off the install disk, install on the empty partition and then..? It'll boot off the old partition or the new? Or I'll get one of those menu choice, which instance do I want?

Any bad news doing it that way? I've heard people say never install on anything but a clean new disk. which is what i did this time. and one tiny batch file...

 

The restrictions on access to the root of the system drive (normally C:\), is not something new with Windows 10 but was introduced with Windows 7 (or an update), to try and prevent the way that certain malware, (Rootkits), were running.

I agree it can be a PITA for those of us who were trained in a time before Malware. The fault has to be laid squarely at the feet of the scum that infest us with malware

Now for the post horse bolting advice *Wink

With complex setups it's good policy to make disk images to an external drive of the install of all applications at regular intervals, during the Install Process ...

• Immediately after the install of the OS
• After the inevitable post install updates
• After the install of all applications
• After any major application change

You can use free software to make the images the Go-to here is Macrium Reflect Free

With these backups images a complete restore can be made in less than an hour

 

No - writing it to C:\ is not allowed. If you really must have a .bat on the root of C:\ (though I can't think why) then you can. Just write it somewhere else first, then copy or move it to the root of C:\. That works, I've just done it (and then deleted it). Both actions get the 'you need administrator privileges...' pop-up, but will complete if you click Continue. Oh, and once it's there you can't edit it either (that counts as a direct write to C:\ too).

Another place with the same restrictions (can't write directly, only allowed to copy/move there) is the Start menu for all users. Same reason, it's a place malware would like to write to.

 

I can see the sense of it. Can't see the sense of not making it clear to the admin though. There's plenty of space typically on the relevant screens when changing permissions, giving ownerships and whatever to spell out exceptions to what you'd take to be natural operation.

.

I did a drag and drop and that worked. cut and paste wouldn't though. i got that error message " Error 0x80070522 a required privilege was not held by the client"

No idea what that privilege might be or how to fix it. Been getting that a few times since the screw up. that's a nuisance, too, not being able to select and copy those messages at times like this.

me neither. i was following instructions blindly at the time. used to be we had an 'auto' bat that set the paths and such but this wasn't that.

anyway, the point is: what can I do about this situation? still looks like nothing but reinstall?

 

Yes, looks like that one is self-inflicted - cut and paste works for me.

You could try an in-place repair install first. That would preserve your files and installed apps. Always best to make backups first, though.
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade