Where to find (or reset) default file ownwership/permissions?

[Ms. Linda A.W.]

I recently have had the excitement of a computer death (6 yr old Dell laptop,
stopped booting). In coming up with an interim solution until I can get a
replacement, I had an old test machine I'm installing backups on (though some
programs won't work because of the new machines lesser capabilities).

In doing so, I'm doing large numbers of copies (~restores) from old hard disk
to the new. The old hard disk was in FAT32, the new has /Prog and /Home on
separate _NTFS_ partitions.

Not obvious, perhaps, but in restoring everything, it is owned by "me".

I'm the only user of the machine, so this doesn't seem like it should be a
problem, *BUT* it is.

Whenever I run the Windows installer, in it's great wisdom, it invokes the
install as a service running as "SYSTEM". As a result, it fails most installs
to shared directories with a permission "denied" message because it is trying
to install common files into directories that are owned by me (not system).

Was confusing at first, as I couldn't figure out why I was getting the messages.
I owned the files in question, I was running the installer as "SYSTEM" and it
should have, at least, the same privs as me, but it doesn't choose to override
ownership.

This lead me to the fact that all of permissions on various directories under
"Home" (Doc&Settings) and "Prog" (ProgramFiles) are incorrect.

I looked for a sript or document to reset or flag file values that didn't have
the standard security settings, but no luck.

Does anyone know of a tool or file-list that has the default owership and
security listed for all of the Microsoft-installed files in an XP installation?

Thanks,
Linda

 

[Steven L Umbach]

I don't know of a list but generally all files/folders are owned by
administrators and administrators and system have full control permissions
to everywhere with the possible exception that administrators may not have
permissions to a user's profile where often only the user and system have
full control permissions and the user is the owner of all folders/files in
his user profile folder under documents and settings. I would try making
sure system and administrators have full control permissions to the
directories where access is being denied. --- Steve

 

[Ms. Linda A.W.]

I don't know of a list but generally all files/folders are owned by
administrators and administrators and system have full control permissions
to everywhere with the possible exception that administrators may not have
permissions to a user's profile where often only the user and system have
full control permissions and the user is the owner of all folders/files in
his user profile folder under documents and settings. I would try making
sure system and administrators have full control permissions to the
directories where access is being denied. --- Steve

---
Ah, thanks, owned by administrators makes more sense. I forget that
files can be owned by groups and not just users on Win. All of the files in
question were owned by "me" -- which gave puzzling error messages concerning
not having sufficient access to install files into directories that I owned,
but I figured the installer wasn't smart enough to note that the target files
had the same owner as the user running the install.

I had been changing the owner to "SYSTEM" to get around this, but that
just seemed "wrong".

Thanks!
-linda