File/folder owner shows incorrectly, how possible?

Jim,

jimhoyle said:

I have a bunch of files/folders. I go to folder properties, tab Security, Advanced, at the top it says Owner. In this case it says Administrators (COMPUTERNAME\Administrators).

1 Since you were not using File explorer for this part of the check, what were you using?
2 I sometimes set Administrators as the owner of a folder or file but I have not noticed the computer setting that by itself. Which folder is this?

jimhoyle said:

I go to explorer to see the same folder listed. I right-click on the top bar, More, in Details there is [x] Owner. When that's ticked, the explorer listing will show owner. And in this case, now the Owner for the exact same folder is COMPUTERNAME\MyUserName.

3 I assume that your user account is 'a member of the Administrators group' i.e. it is an 'Admin user account'? [both terms mean the same thing]
4 There are lots of anomalies in Windows. This one might simply demonstrate that File explorer can only list users in its owner column and cannot list user groups - so it just does its best.

Denis

I am still very confused. Which one is in effect? "Advanced Security Settings" Owner or the explorer details view Owner?

Also, the inheritance is very confusing. I checked:
- C:\Users\USERNAME = Owner SYSTEM, inheritance disabled
- C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData = Owner USERNAME, inheritance enabled
- C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Office = Owner Administrators, inherited from C:\Users\USERNAME [EDIT: I just added Office there]

So is the Owner inherited or is it independent from inheritance?

Where do I control where inheritance is from?

- - - Updated - - -

Try3 said:

1 Since you were not using File explorer for this part of the check, what were you using?

In the basic Windows File explorer, right-click, Properties, Security (tab). The normal place. (The other view was on the same explorer's Details view with Owner column visible.)

Try3 said:

2 I sometimes set Administrators as the owner of a folder or file but I have not noticed the computer setting that by itself. Which folder is this?

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft
(I'm also experiencing a problem where something corrupted and wrong permissions were set automatically, I do not know why that happened.)

Try3 said:

3 I assume that your user account is 'a member of the Administrators group' i.e. it is an 'Admin user account'? [both terms mean the same thing]

Yes, my current user account is an Admin, according to User Accounts.

Try3 said:

4 There are lots of anomalies in Windows. This one might simply demonstrate that File explorer can only list users in its owner column and cannot list user groups - so it just does its best.

I can confirm that this is some sort of bug. Because if I do "dir /q", that also tries to display the owner. If dir /q says "..." it means it's an orphaned SID. And on one folder, it does say ... while explorer Details view says Owner USERNAME (not the orphaned SID). So apparently the Details view Owner is buggy and useless! However, the reason therefore is not that it has problems with user vs. user groups, but it apparently can show a completely incorrect Owner.

By the way, my username's SID is S-1-5-21-*-*-*-1001 while there's also the same but ends with -1002. I do not know where the -1002 came from and why it doesn't have a username, just the orphaned SID. It's possible that somehow my user profile has divided into two due to some problem, this is very difficult to fix. If someone knows why this extra -1002 SID may appear, please help.

I had a look at C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft and it is owned by my own UserName.

I had a nose around and there are indeed some folders that are owned by the Administrators group.

I do not know where the -1002 came from

If you look in the Registry Key

Code:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList

you'll see that it has, amongst other things, a SubKey named after the SID and that in each SubKey you'll see an item called ProfileImagePath that shows the user folder path so you can tie that up to the SID -1002.

You can then, in any command or powershell window, run the command

Code:

WMIC.exe useraccount list full

which shows usernames and SIDs so you can tie those up to the user path you found in the Registry.

Speculation only
I have an unnecessary user called defaultuser0 and it has a user folder path C:\Users\defaultuser0. I imagine that deleting that user would leave some folders without an owner that would appear as its old, now orphaned, SID. I have not seen any examples of an orphaned owner being shown as ... but I have never bothered deleting any of the unnecessary usernames on my computers.

If I was trying to reset Permissions to their defaults I would start with
Is there a utility to reset all W10 permissions back to defaults - TenForums
This thread suggests some third-party utilities including
Resetting NTFS files permission in Windows - Graphical Utility - lallous lab
Resetting NTFS files security and permission in Windows - lallous lab
I have never done this. I just found the thread interesting so I noted those links.

Denis