Cant take ownership of folder

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MrAl
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Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi there,


I ran into a very strange problem. I tried to take ownership of a folder that another program had
created on the hard drive some time ago and it will not let me take ownership. When i right click
on the folder and click 'security' tab it says that i dont have permission to change it.

Any ideas?


I've done this before with other folders and clicking on the security tab allows me to change
the owner(s) with no problem, but this one wont even let me in far enough to change that.
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
SETEC_Astronomy
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by SETEC_Astronomy »

Do you run as a limited user? Do you login to Windows with a password? You might try running CHKDSK and rebooting to see where that gets you. When all else fails here's a lengthy set of options provided by Microsoft MSDN - Taking Ownership
cndy06
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by cndy06 »

I agree with this. There were some instances that you can't take ownership of the folder that was been already created by another program. I had experiences with this and it was really hard to find some remedy at first. This kind of problem was just normal, for which this covers the security of the file folder.
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MrAl
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi again,

SET:
Well i tried that and it didnt work either. That's what was so strange about this problem.
It would let me get up to the point where i was just about to change the security,
and then it would show an error.

If i remember right and if my hard drive backtracking detective work was right, i had
traced this problem 'program' to a service pack installation session. The service
pack (disk) had left this directory and never deleted it in the cleanup process.
Normally it cleans it up after the install. Since then i had to reinstall the system
because of a virus attack and then a short time later is when i noticed that directory
was still there. My guess is that it somehow 'locks' the directory while the install
is taking place so the user doesnt accidentally delete or move something, and then
later when it's done it deletes the directory. In the past the install 'unpack'
directory (that's what it is im almost sure) had gotten deleted after the service pack
install completed.

Luckily, it's not taking up too much disk space and also i am soon switching to a new
drive anyway, but i would still like to know what could cause this problem. It's
probably taking up about 100MB or maybe 200MB, but the disk is quite large.
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
reloadron
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by reloadron »

What is the name and location of this folder MrAl?

Ron
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MrAl
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi Ron,


It's a rather long cryptic name with letters and numbers but no other types of characters.
It was created when a service pack was installed a while back.
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reloadron
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by reloadron »

There are a few 3rd party applications you can try. Unlocker comes to mind as an early candidate to remove the folder. You may want to give it a try.

If you right click the folder and choose delete are you getting a message?

Ron
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MrAl
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi Ron,


Oh ok that's very interesting.
Yes, it gives a message that it is not accessible.

Note that i am not as worried about it now that i am switching hard drives, but
i would still like to know how to deal with this kind of thing in the future in case
it happens again. Also, i have installed the system a number of times with that
same service pack and that never happened before this either. That's strange.
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
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MrAl
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi again,


Very interesting update here...


I downloaded and tried a version of Knoppix and finally i got a version of Linux to work
on my system! Im very surprise at this since every other one didnt work except
Mandrake Move but that didnt recognize my graphics good enough to get 24 bit color.
Anyway, this is very interesting...

When i boot into Knoppix (from CD or from USB install) guess what? I can see inside
all the folders and thus get enough access to delete the stupid files left over from
the service pack install, and yes, it was the folder the service pack temporarily uses
for the install but this time for some reason didnt delete and locked me out from
within Windows itself. So now i can delete the stuff and that takes care of that.

I was at one time thinking of booting to some older DOS to see if this would work
too but never did it because i thought maybe it wouldnt see the partitions.
Since Knoppix seems to do the trick and doesnt take that long to boot either
from USB i guess i'll just do it that way. It's kind of interesting to play around with
a little too just to see how Linux works.

Gee, what a secure folder that was (ha ha ha).

Now one more thing, how to set the security so that internet intruders can not get in
on some given folder like "MySecrets".
Any ideas?

Thanks.
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
SETEC_Astronomy
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by SETEC_Astronomy »

MrAl wrote:Now one more thing, how to set the security so that internet intruders can not get in
on some given folder like "MySecrets".
Any ideas?
If an attacker is already so deep into your system that he's browsing files there isn't much you can do to stop him besides pulling the plug. The exception being if you're exposing an FTP or Samba server to the Internet which as a home user is a bad idea in the first place.
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MrAl
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Re: Cant take ownership of folder

Post by MrAl »

Hi SET,

Well i noticed that when a certain folder of mine was 'protected' or whatever they call it,
there were no attacks in that folder, but when it was not protected (made impossible to
get into to read or write) the attackers would replace a lot of the information (most of it)
with their own information, which was almost nothing really, so all of the original information
which was important would get lost completely which would in turn make it harder to
get rid of whatever they installed on the machine along with the attack.

I guess i could try just setting the security manually and see how that works over time.
LEDs vs Bulbs, LEDs are winning.
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