Inheritated Permissions

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Guest

I have just built a new machine from scratch, installing Vista Home on it.
After transferring the old hard drives from my old machine, I've found an
oddity that I cannot figure out how to solve.

One of the drives in question has a large number of video on it, separated
into folders by title/series/etc.

The issue I've come across is when moving or deleting them, I have to answer
UAC permission requests. I've looked at the ownership, and it appears that
the original "owner", who was me, on my old machine, still exists.

I can individually take ownership of the files and remove the Inheritated
ownership for each file, but not for a directory full of them. If I do so,
the dialog box shows the first file and never moves onward, even if left to
run all night while I sleep.

Is there a quick and easy way to accomplish this? There are a LOT of files
on this drive, and two drives to deal with, and I don't relish doing this one
at a time.

Thanks in advance for any help.


Eric the Grey
 
Use the TAKEOWN command in a cmd prompt. Type takeown /? for details on how
to use it. You may also have to give yourself permission after you have
ownership. Use the CACLS command for this.
 
Ok, I tried it and no go.

If I use TAKEOWN, I get the following response:

INFO: The current logged on user does not have ownership privileges on
the file (or folder): "Like the Clouds, Like the Wind.avi".

On any file I try with.

I am logged on as the administrator (My login) and only account on the
machine, but it appears that that authority doesn't work at a DOS command
prompt.

CACLS is depreciated according to the /? info, replaced with ICACLS. I
tried a couple of tries with this, but I don't think I'm understanding the
information on that command correctly. It keeps telling me the parameter
"John" (my login name) is incorrect. I've got to read it some more after I
get up.


Eric the Grey
 
Sorry, I forgot to say that you need to do this from an elevated cmd prompt.
My mistake. Right click on cmd.exe and pick Run as administrator. You will
need to use the /R and the /D Y parameters with takeown. I was in a rush and
forgot that cacls had been replace by icacls. It does the same thing with
more options. Both should work from an elevated cmd prompt. My apologies for
leaving out that crucial step.
 
icacls will also take ownership, but only of a file that you already have the
right to take ownership of. Most likely you have it as Admins will probably
have Full Control over the files. If not, you must use takeown.
 
That was the key! I actually thought about it for a few seconds before
dropping off to sleep this morning, after my last posting. Simply taking
ownership of the files wasn't enough though. I had to remove the inherited
permissions before I could do anything with the files, like move, delete,
etc. Every time I tried to do anything like that, I was faced with UAC.

ICACLS * /RESET /T /C /L

This is the command and switches I used to reset the inherited permissions.
It also removed the old owner from the file security completely.

It also runs recursively through sub-directories, so I was able to simply
run it at the root of the drive, and grab everything... It took some time,
given that not only do I have all the video, but my entire music collection
(22 gigs worth) on this drive as well...

Thank you again for the help. Hopefully, if someone else has this issue,
they can find it here.


Eric the Grey
 
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