If you find yourself in a situation where you need to take ownership of a large number of files and/or folders – like after a data restore – you can either do it the tedious way using the properties dialog one file/folder at a time, or you can use TAKEOWN. TAKEOWN allows you to take ownership (or reassign it to the administrators group) via the command line and has a recursive flag to change the settings for a large number of objects at once. Below is the /? text for TAKEOWN…
C:\>takeown /? TAKEOWN [/S system [/U username [/P [password]]]] /F filename [/A] [/R [/D prompt]] Description: This tool allows an administrator to recover access to a file that was denied by re-assigning file ownership. Parameter List: /S system Specifies the remote system to connect to. /U [domain\]user Specifies the user context under which the command should execute. /P [password] Specifies the password for the given user context. Prompts for input if omitted. /F filename Specifies the filename or directory name pattern. Wildcard "*" can be used to specify the pattern. Allows sharename\filename. /A Gives ownership to the administrators group instead of the current user. /R Recurse: instructs tool to operate on files in specified directory and all subdirectories. /D prompt Default answer used when the current user does not have the "list folder" permission on a directory. This occurs while operating recursively (/R) on sub-directories. Valid values "Y" to take ownership or "N" to skip. /? Displays this help message. NOTE: 1) If /A is not specified, file ownership will be given to the current logged on user. 2) Mixed patterns using "?" and "*" are not supported. 3) /D is used to suppress the confirmation prompt. Examples: TAKEOWN /? TAKEOWN /F lostfile TAKEOWN /F \\system\share\lostfile /A TAKEOWN /F directory /R /D N TAKEOWN /F directory /R /A TAKEOWN /F * TAKEOWN /F C:\Windows\System32\acme.exe TAKEOWN /F %windir%\*.txt TAKEOWN /S system /F MyShare\Acme*.doc TAKEOWN /S system /U user /F MyShare\foo.dll TAKEOWN /S system /U domain\user /P password /F share\filename TAKEOWN /S system /U user /P password /F Doc\Report.doc /A TAKEOWN /S system /U user /P password /F Myshare\* TAKEOWN /S system /U user /P password /F Home\Logon /R TAKEOWN /S system /U user /P password /F Myshare\directory /R /A
This tool will save many hours of work if you find yourself in the situation of needing to change ownership of many objects at once!
Happy Hosting!
Thanks! This worked perfectly, saving many clicks. cacls now works!