How to MASS change ownership of files after reformat
Windows XP Home/Media ONLY
Written by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net
First we need to make these are true
1) Your computer currently can load up to your desktop fine
2) Your an administrator account OR in SAFE-MODE
The ideal situation is that you have a corrupted hard drive that a virus wrecked or something. We will call that the "corrupt" drive. Then you have another hard drive that you have ALREADY re-installed Windows on and are now sitting on that empty desktop of that new computer. I would activate it, and get the 100MB of updates you need from a re-install (This solves tons of problems later on). Even though your "corrupt" hard drive can't boot by itself you can use the "fresh" hard drive to boot into windows since the file structure is still intact on the "corrupt" hard drive. That will allow you to just browse the files of that "corrupted" hard drive through My Computer. However, you will get a nasty error of "Access Denied." That is because your username and windows certifications no longer match what they were before. So now we start to fix that.
You need these programs
Account Checker (Checks if currently logged in account is admin, Made by Dark Slipstream)
Admin_AccCheck.exe 38KB
985 downloads
Security Add-on (Adds the "Security" tab on Properties of a file)
Sec_Adder.rar 335.63KB
646 downloads
Lets start
I'm tired of making tutorials for images for every step of the way, I will explain it thoroughly and you should be able to follow it.
1) UnRAR that "Security Add-on" and install it. That will add a new security tab to make things 10000x easier for us.
2) Run the "Account Checker" and confirm you are on an Admin Account
3) Find the drive of the "corrupted" hard drive (EX: F:) and right click on it
4) Click Properties
5) You should see if the "Security Add-On" installed correctly a new tab called "Security (XPFSE)"
6) Click that tab and load it up
7) If you user name is ON that list, simply CLICK it to get it highlighted if not these next steps are for you
Only follow these steps if your user name is NOT on the list.
START HERE
7a) Click the "Add" button and you will get another pop up.
7b) From that pop up click "Advance"
7c) Then on that pop up click "Find now"
7d) It will load all user names. Find yours and click it (Ex: iBotPeaches:PEACHES)
7e) Once it is highlighted, click "OK" near bottom
7f) You should be returned to main step 7 now. If not click "okay" again
END HERE
8 ) Now select your user name on that list so it is highlighted. Then click "Advance" bottom right
9) Then click the "Owner" tab on top.
10) You will be greeted with the OLD admin account of the "corrupted" drive and the NEW admin account of the "fresh" drive. Simply highlight the NEW admin account (Usually 2nd on list)
11) With the newer account highlighted tick the check box that says "Replace owner on sub-containers and objects"
12) Then click "Apply" or "Okay" or "Done" (Depends on version and type of OS)
13) You should now have a progress bar in front of you mass giving you ownership of all files in that directory or drive you specified.
iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net
March 9, 2009
I'll add pics later, I just don't have my favorite screen shot tool program installed yet.