Taking Ownership of Everything and Always Acting as an Administrator

Hi,

I'm not a Microsoft Dev, so I don't exactly know why it happens, I just know that it does...

I had multiple people attempting a similar operation and having to reinstall windows. It's simply a bad idea to modify every file on the file system. Windows doesn't like it.

Taking ownership messes with file metadata. Modifying it could cause things like certificates to not work properly anymore, but not sure about that.

It breaks things like the Windows UI (Start, Search, etc).

The broken recycle bin is already a problem caused by the process.

The safeguards are there for a good reason and shouldn't be ignored. If you want to modify files, you should change the permissions on those individually. Do this at your own risk. Modifying critical system files can render your system unusable.

It is very possible that starting the process could already have created problems. If you run into issues, probably the only way to restore the system to its original state is to reinstall windows.

If you want to have these permissions, you can check how to run CMD as TrustedInstaller and gain system level privileges that way. I don't recommend it though since you can easily break your entire windows installation that way.

What files are you trying to modify? Typically, you don't need to modify files that are protected by these levels of permissions.

If you want to modify things like program files, you should be able to simply click "continue" when a warning pops up.

Since your files already got modified, I would suggest running the following commands in CMD as admin to repair some of the damage:

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

sfc /scannow

Regards,

LightJack

Thank you. I do not have particular files in mind to modify but simply wanted to take ownership of everything in order to be able to modify some files in the future and never receive confirmation messages. But if taking ownership of all files can render the system unstable, it may be better not to do that.

I have run the two given commands. After the processes finished, the command prompt returned the results:

Today, a lot of shortcuts pinned to the Start menu disappeared without obvious reasons, even though I tried to take ownership of everything a few days ago and did not try to do that again. So it is not clear why some of the shortcuts disappeared only after a few days. But everything else works as usual.

Hi,

Taking ownership of your entire file system is GOING TO BREAK THINGS.

It will probably render your system unusable.

You can use an admin account and set the UAC to never. This is still not recommended but should work fine.

Why do you want to do this if you don't mind me asking?

Regards,

LightJack

Thank you for the warning. I started the process of taking ownership (and the green progress bar appeared) but then canceled it, because I saw that it was going to last long.

However, ownership was taken of some files on disk C. After that was done and after I later tried to open the Recycle Bin, a message appeared saying that the Recycle Bin had become corrupt and had to be emptied automatically. I do not know why this had happened.

I wanted to take ownership of everything on the computer in order to be able to edit any file and never receive any warning or confirmation messages.

Can you explain why you think that taking ownership of everything on the computer may make the system unusable?

Dear Vlad6,doing this procedure on the local disk C: you will have full control of all files and folders inside the C drive;

Hope this helps, see you soon!

Hello Vlad6, welcome to the Microsoft community, I'll be happy to help you today;

I understand that you want full control of the entire C: drive;

Initially I recommend you to try the method provided by the expert in the link below:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

After the change, check if it is possible to copy files in Program Files;

Hope this helps, see you soon!