Issues after taking ownership of C:\

Interestingly, when I previously followed these steps (from the sign-in screen) the screen that is supposed to show in step 3 never occurred, and it just went back to the loading symbol as before. And as I said in a previous post, I cannot do the boot from an USB due to lack of (functioning) Windows machines. So I guess that approach doesn't work either.

I've gone and reset (refreshed?) Windows whilst keeping my files to see if that works. I'll give an update on the results.

Just had another look at Microsoft's help page for that. It seems that either I misread or misunderstood completely, because apparently it will work on a Mac as long as I then put it onto a general USB drive. I'll try that next, then, after this reset's finished (currently 37% through the installation).

Both the installation media and the full reset lose all my personal files (since I haven't made a recovery point; I'm not very smart), so I suppose there's no real reason to favour one over the other. Many thanks for the help.

Just finished the re-installation (whilst keeping personal files). My personal files are still here, so that's good. It'll be a tiny bit of a hassle to get all the apps again, but it's not essential, and I use Firefox so the only thing I really lost otherwise is the local internet cache (passwords and details are saved elsewhere). If anything it's been a valuable learning experience (I love clichés).

Many thanks to essenbe. I'll mark this as solved for now.

NotACactus said:

Hi there. I've been rather stupid and transferred ownership of C:\, including system32, to my account (the administrator and only user). While I would instantly switch it back, due to an unrelated reason I restarted my computer (Surface Pro 4). Since then I've done research and found that it was definitely not a good idea to transfer ownership to begin with.

When I turn the computer on, it boots up normally until the point where it (presumably) leads to the login screen, but remains with the spinning-dots loading symbol. After some experimentation it still responds to the keyboard shortcut to change brightness. Also, upon CTRL+ALT+DELETE it goes to the normal screen except without any text. The buttons for wifi, ease of access, and sleep/shutdown/restart on the bottom-right are present and do work. When I hold down the power button the normal 'slide to shutdown' screen appears and is functional.

Is there any solution? Since I can't log in or access File Explorer (or Command Prompt) I can't reset permissions.

Many thanks for any help at all.

I'm a Surface Pro 4 user who just did the same thing. Out of the blue, I couldn't create folders or files on my own drive outside of My User folders (desktop, documents, etc). I'm told I need administrator privileges to create a new folder??? I am an administrator user!!! Evidently, I lost ownership of everything on my drive?? I'm the sole account on the device, so I have no idea what caused it.

None of the folders I checked listed me as owner or allowed me Full Control, so the first thing I did was take ownership of the entire C drive... And now I'm unable to log into the Windows 10 GUI; it doesn't get past the circling lodging dots that normally finish in under a second. I booted into a safe mode and initiated a System Restore, and it seems to be frozen.

What causes these ownership issues? Why did they suddenly occur? I take it reinstallation of the while operating system is the only cure?