Override TrustedInstaller ownership...?

Thanks a lot for your elaboration Barman58. I really appreciate it.

This is very interesting and useful.

- - - Updated - - -

Ok, for the record.

I enabled Cortana in both Local Group Policy Editor and Registry after the old renamed Cortana folder was deleted thinking that the new folder from the Windows Update process made everything right, but I was wrong. Cortana does not work.

So your reference to reinstalling and re-registering Cortana @Mcboatmaster was relevant after all.

Macboatmaster said:

Cheers, pleased to have helped, even if my suggestion was not as originally intended.

I'm having the same problem now: Updated Windows, unable to change read / write access!

Full title:

Updated Windows (from 1809 to 1903), dealing with inability to change permissions, read and write access on an older, corrupted instance of Windows I kept around for game storage!

Yeah I ended up dealing with OS corruption and luckily had a back-up that I fell back on and kept the rather large 2TB M.2 NVME drive around as a secondary drive as I didn't feel like reinstalling hundreds of gigabytes of games worth of data and I just kept them in their original locations, i.e. K:ProgramFiles (86) > Steam > Steamapps > Common etc.

This morning I attempted to reinstall a game to a similar directory (Origin Games) and was told that I couldn't do that because the folder is ready access only. Attempting to uncheck the read only checkbox and it's simply reverted when you close the window. I've already spent 3 hours with this and I've tried manually changing the permissions and I've tried two separate programs, TakeControl Pro and Take Control EX that are not working.

What are my options here, it seems this is a TrustedInstaller problem because TrustedInstaller still thinks that this is a working instance of the operating system even though it's on a completely different drive path (K).

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Barman58 said:

Games developers are unfortunately still living in the era of XP

You may be able to follow my earlier instructions on the use of the "hidden" administrator,

BACKUP your system to an external drive and then disconnect the backup drive This is a dangerous procedure!

Login as the hidden administrator

1. go to the root of each games folder tree in turn
2. carefully add your personal login Full Control Rights to each folder tree (tick the option to apply to "this and all child folders" )
3. Do not change anything in the rights held by the Trusted Installer user

Be careful to not change other Users rights, especially the Trusted Installer, as the system needs these to be set correctly to operate

If you are going to change permissions for more than one game fully test the operation of each before you move on

No dice! I even opened Explorer via elevated cmd prompt. Out of desperation I enabled full control on everyone under Properties > Security and testing on a folder (not the entire drive, sound advice) there is no way to uncheck the "read only" checkbox.

If I attempt to take control of folder it results in "failed to enumerate objects: access is denied"

Cross-posted here: Updated Windows (from 1809 to 1903), dealing with inability to change permissions, read and write access on an older, corrupted instance of Windows I kept around for game storage! : Windows10

- - - Updated - - -

This is the problem:

Windows 10 Failed to Enumerate Objects in the Container. Access is denied [Solved] - Driver Easy

Note, this solution doesn't work as expressed by others in the comment section.

Hello,

sorry for digging up this thread, but I would be very interested in the Built-in Administrator thing:

Barman58 said:

There is one system user that has higher rights to those of Trustedinstaller ... The hidden Administrator

Barman58 said:

This is a basic top down list
Hidden Administrator
Trusted installer
Normal admin account and system accounts
Logged in local standard users
Logged in remote standard users

I actually thought that the only difference between it and a user with admin rights was the lack of the UAC prompt - have I been wrong all these years?

Barman58 said:

(...) if is also a good ide to give it a password ( secure 30+ Character and stored separately from the system) to close the loophole that Microsoft missed when they did not assign a password by default

Well, it doesn't do any harm and I actually don't like this "killing argument", but If a task already has such high rights to activate the admin account, then the system is no longer in good shape anyway.

Thanks and greetings,
Martin