How to get full permissions for C drive folders?

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time Googling this now, going from forum to forum and am by this time (understandably, no?) feeling very irritated! Why on earth do Microsoft design Windows 10 Home Edition so that dialogue boxes come up telling you to contact the system or computer administrator? I mean, really! Who do they imagine that will be in 99% of cases?

Anyway, the issue (you can doubtless guess all from the thread title): I want to edit a cfg file in a folder in Program Files (x86), but I am told it is read-only, as are all the files in the Program Files folders. I have gone round in circles since then following advice on forums (including Microsoft Help) that go nowhere. I need to 'set permissions' (never been a problem in Windows 7, but here I can't do it), or 'Take possession' of the folder. It all hinges on me going to Properties/Security and editing what comes up under my user account (which is already an administrative account). But as far as I can see, none of the accounts that show up there (including the administrator account I created) has full permission, and all the check boxes are greyed out, so I can't change anything.

Can I use 'takeown' in a cmd window (with appropriate switches) to take ownership, with full permissions of a folder, rather than a single file? Trying this with one file:

takeown /f abc.cfg

the cmd box simply informs me I don't have ownership privileges for the file. Other switches bring up invalid syntax errors. Helpful...

Is there any guru here who could help me solve this (I should forget the takeown option for now maybe)? I curse Microsoft (well, very gently and politely!) for making the Home Edition so user unfriendly in this respect.

Many thanks in advance. (I thought I might feel better for having got this off my chest, but I don't! Oh well... )

Martin

Thanks, but the 'blurb' there says:

"The Take Ownership context menu will not be available when you right click or press and hold on any drive, the C:\Program Files folder, the C:\Program Files (x86) folder, the C:\ProgramData folder, the C:\Users folder, and the C:\Windows folder."

so presumably that isn't going to help?

trying to get permission all c is a big no no it would mean any virus had full access to everything. A lot of folders are owned by system so virus cant change system files in a lot of cases it just as for admin perrmision so its sure you do want to change things this is the UAC setting

I don't need (or even want) to get permission for the whole C drive, just specific folders/subfolders within Program Files (x86), for instance, so that I can update/edit cfg or ini files. Done this for years in Window 7 without a single problem.

Ah, OK, so not subfolders thereof. I misunderstood. Will try it and post back. Thanks again.

Hi Brink,

You may possibly remember this:

How do I change my user name (Home Edition)? Solved - Windows 10 Forums

That 'worked', and in Users there is no folder 'Marti' now, just 'Martin'. The registry still had quite a number of entries though with users\marti\ after I followed through what you said in that thread, and I spent an hour changing each one by hand.. I searched the registry for instances of \marti\ and there were none, so I thought that that would be the end of that.

However, when I install the add take ownership reg keys from the thread to which you gave the link and then right-click on folder '...users\martin' and run it (the context menu is there now), I get a cmd window showing that permissions are being given to files/folders in ... users\marti\....

So before I go any further, I need to ask:

1. Why, as there is no such user now, are permissions being edited to a supposed 'marti' user rather than 'Martin'?

2. Is there a batch script (or whatever) that will change all registry entries \users\marti\ to \users\martin\ ... given what the take ownership reg file has done, I don't fancy editing every instance manually now! (I have downloaded and run the 'Remove_Take_Ownership_from_context_menu.reg' file, but there are now plenty of registry entries referring to 'marti' in the registry. Wish I'd made a restore point now!

As so often, trying to solve one PC problem just gives me an additional one! Anyone who says that computers are not both self-aware and malicious clearly doesn't own one!

Thanks.