I Changed Ownership of Most of C: - Do I need immediate help?

Trying to find out how to get to be able to write a .bat file to C: in order to install and use harbour I came to these forums and started reading about other people who couldn't write to their hard drives.

With various solutions offered.

One of which said change all ownerships of C:

Which I did - or got started on it - and then I browsed over to another solution at https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...dows-10-a.html where I read warning in red:

Warning
Do not change the owner of your Windows drive (ex: C: ). Doing so could result in Windows becoming very unstabl

So now I'm in trouble.

How do I get out of it? I stopped the change when it was still in progress.

C: currently shows 'SYSTEM' as owner.

p.s. still can't save from notepad++ to c:
I'm logged on a the sole user/administrator as usual

It depends what you changed and how mny folders were cant you save files to?

I couldn't save to C: was the only place. my documents, etc,. everything was okay

can I step back somehow? does it make automatic restore points ? I know I haven't tried to make any.

I installed it on a new 1T drive. I should have partitioned the drive 50/50 right then I guess. don't remember it giving me the option. but almost straight away got hassles with it telling me c: was the system drive... starts off not wanting to show you the contents for instance and you have to alter that...

there's no 'check' software that i can run that will see if things are seriously wrong or not?

.originally it was pure. new system. three months ago maybe.

.i was operating as admin. sole user.

. i think i tried to change ownership to my username (still admin rank - the only admin user)
but i don't think that took. because nothing happened. no windows, no messages, nothing.

. but when i decided to change it back (because it didn't work, still couldn't save a file) to system i got a message window and details of files being processed whirring past...

.as it was proceeding i suddenly realised that many things might become system owned that shouldn't be..

. so i stopped it.

. and somewhere in there I also saw that warning post on these forums.

so it is possible that all i effectively did was attempt to change to system stuff that already was system -

and change other 'private' stuff to system.

how bad could that be? surely not as bad as changing system stuff to private? different ballgame, surely?

saw amongst the posts someone talking about using kaspersky and switching it to 'windows' mode or something - and it looks for windows faults.. could that be a checker?

i've just spent three weeks slowly and painfully ( as usual ) identifying required software and installing it here in order to build the workstation I want... now any sort of reinstall is going to scrap all of that, isn't it?

What cmd did you issue and did you run it as admin ie right click and choose run as admin. Its possible it didnt take but we cant be sure. Its common not to be able to write to c:\ system owns it and admin has rights but users dont have write and as admin is part of users it cant write to it its so oyou cant screw up system files in the root

abrogard said:

...win10 wouldn't let me write a batch file to c:. Even when I'm the admin. And the only user. And the owner of the whole thing. Etc...

No - writing it to C:\ is not allowed. If you really must have a .bat on the root of C:\ (though I can't think why) then you can. Just write it somewhere else first, then copy or move it to the root of C:\. That works, I've just done it (and then deleted it). Both actions get the 'you need administrator privileges...' pop-up, but will complete if you click Continue. Oh, and once it's there you can't edit it either (that counts as a direct write to C:\ too).

Another place with the same restrictions (can't write directly, only allowed to copy/move there) is the Start menu for all users. Same reason, it's a place malware would like to write to.

I can see the sense of it. Can't see the sense of not making it clear to the admin though. There's plenty of space typically on the relevant screens when changing permissions, giving ownerships and whatever to spell out exceptions to what you'd take to be natural operation.

.

Just write it somewhere else first, then copy or move it to the root of C:\.

I did a drag and drop and that worked. cut and paste wouldn't though. i got that error message " Error 0x80070522 a required privilege was not held by the client"

No idea what that privilege might be or how to fix it. Been getting that a few times since the screw up. that's a nuisance, too, not being able to select and copy those messages at times like this.

(though I can't think why)

me neither. i was following instructions blindly at the time. used to be we had an 'auto' bat that set the paths and such but this wasn't that.

anyway, the point is: what can I do about this situation? still looks like nothing but reinstall?