How to reset all user permissions to default?

I accidentally stopped a user permission change task and now my system is all messed up, programs won’t load correctly after reboot, etc.. . I can’t change the permissions back because it tells me that I do not have access to certain folders. When I try to find these folders to change them manually, for some reason they are not visible any more. (I have show hidden files to show them)
I tried a system restore and the restore points are corrupt, so, I have been looking for a way to reset all permissions to default or factory setting if you will.

Is there any way to reset all permissions to default without going one by one?

Any help will be much appreciated!!

Welcome to Microsoft Answers!

You will need to run ‘Subinacl Tool’ to reset the permission to normal. To reset system permissions, follow the steps:

1. Download subinacl.msi from the following link, and save it on the desktop.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en#AffinityDownloads (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e8ba3e56-d8fe-4a91-93cf-ed6985e3927b&displaylang=en#AffinityDownloads)
2. On the desktop, double-click subinacl.msi to install the tool.
3. Select C:\Windows\System32 as the destination folder.
Note This step assumes that Windows is installed in C:\Windows. If Windows is installed elsewhere, select the appropriate path to .\System32.
4. Open Notepad.
5. Copy the following commands and then paste them into the opened Notepad window.

subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=administrators=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CURRENT_USER /grant=system=f
subinacl /subkeyreg HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT /grant=system=f
subinacl /subdirectories %SystemDrive% /grant=system=f

6. In Notepad click File, Save As, and then type: reset.cmd
7. In Notepad click Save as type, and then select All Files (*.*).
8. Save the reset.cmdfile to your desktop, and close Notepad.
9. Double-click the reset.cmdfile to reset the Windows Update permissions.
Note This step may take several minutes, so please be patient. When the permissions have been reset, you will be prompted with «Finished, press any key to continue.»
10. Press any key to complete the installation.

Check if you have the right permissions to all the folders for all users.

For more information you may check the article given below. The article given is for Windows XP updates, but still holds good for Windows Vista as well as Windows 7.

Hope this information is helpful.

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer
Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

How to reset File & Folder permissions to default in Windows 10

If you had to change the permissions of files and folder in Windows for some reason, and if you want to reset the permissions to default, this post will help you. One of the users reported that he had to set the ownership and permissions to everyone and full control for a specific task, and now that it’s done, getting back to the default permission is difficult. Since the option is not built into the system, we will have to use the secedit and icacls commands to reconfigure.

How to reset File & Folder permissions to default

Security is essential, and it is not just that other users can access the files, but programs you install on the computer also get the same access. The good news is that fixing the permissions to default is easy, and all you need is to run a command-line program to fix it. Before going ahead, create a system restore point, so in case things go wrong, you can restore.

1. Run icacls command
2. Run Secedit command

You will need admin permission to execute the commands.

1] Run icacls command

Another method to resolve this using the icacls command. However, you will need first to take ownership of the folder and then execute the command. Windows uses the Access Control List to configure permissions for all files and folders. Icacls is a command-line utility that can display and modify the permissions on specified files and apply them.

It comes with a reset option that replaces ACLs with default inherited ACLs for all matching files. We will use the following options to reset

• t—Operates on all specified files in the current directory and its subdirectories.
• q—Suppresses success messages.
• c—Continues the operation despite any file errors. Error messages will still be displayed.

Next, run the following on an elevated command prompt—

Once done, you must save the permission into a file that you can use again later or apply to other computers.

2] Run Secedit command

It allows you to configure and analyze system security by comparing the current config with a template.

Configures and analyzes system security by comparing your current security configuration against specified security templates.

Type CMD in the Run (Win +R) prompt and then press Shift + Enter to open it with admin permission

Execute the following command-

You may get some warning, but you can safely ignore it.

Changing permission on Windows is tricky because there is no way to switch back to default permission once you change it. It should have been there right from the start and let Windows users fix it themselves.

I hope these commands were useful and helped you reset file & folder permissions to default in Windows.

Date: October 27, 2020 Tags: Files, Folder

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How to reset NTFS file permissions in Windows 10

In Windows OS, the files are maintained at different authorization levels and you need proper permissions before you can make changes to a file. You can’t just simply go and edit a file that is owned by some other user. You’d need to reset the file permission in order to take ownership and then edit it. Now, it can be really difficult if you’re not familiar with the commands that you need to run for resetting the file permissions. So, today we take a look at a graphical utility called Reset NTFS file permission, using which you can reset NTFS file permissions in Windows 10/8/7.

Reset NTFS file permission

Reset NTFS file permission is an ultra light-weight utility that can help you restore or reset file and security permissions and take ownership with just a click of the mouse. The user interface is extremely minimal with just a bunch of needed components and features that can be expected out of it. You need to run the program with Administrator privileges.

Once launched, click on Choose Folder to select the folder for which you want to reset the effective permissions and after configuring the available options, just click GO to execute the commands.

Here is is a rundown of options and features that are available with this utility.

1] Reset file permissions: This is the fundamental operation of this utility. When you select any folder, this option is ticked by default. You can uncheck it if you wish to perform other operations.

2] Take file ownership: If you’re not an owner of a file/folder, trying to reset its permissions might result in an error. So you can select this operation to take ownership before resetting the permissions.

3] Apply for all sub-directories: You can select this operation if you want to reset the permissions recursively. Upon execution, permissions for all the files and folders inside the selected directory will also be reset.

4] Reset hidden and system files: Using this, you can make the hidden and system files visible and turn off their respective file attributes.

5] Add/Remove Folder context menu: You can add the option to reset permissions in the folder context menu so that work can be done with just a click.

6] Backup Permissions: You can choose to backup current permissions on a folder before making any changes to them. Select the folder you want to backup permissions for, click Advanced button and then select Backup permissions. Select the location to save the permissions as a text file. Your command will be prepared and displayed in the text area. Press GO to execute the commands and save the backup file.

7] Restore Permissions: You can easily restore the file permissions that you have backed up over the time and recover the integrity of your important files/folders.

This nifty little handy utility stuffs quite useful features in one package. If you’re up for it, you can download it from here.

NOTE: Do backup the file permissions or create a system restore point before making any changes to them. It’s advisable not to mess up with system files and folders as that can result in adverse system failure.

Date: October 26, 2016 Tags: Files, Security

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Quickly Reset NTFS Permissions in Windows 10

Sometimes you need to reset custom NTFS permissions applied to a file or a folder in Windows 10. After performing this operation, all custom access rules will be removed, and inherited permissions will be restored.

NTFS is the standard file system of the Windows NT operating system family. Starting with Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6, it supported the concept of permissions which can be configured to permit or restrict access to files, folders, and other objects locally and over a network.

Permissions

By default, almost all system files, system folders and even Registry keys in Windows 10 are owned by a special built-in user account called «TrustedInstaller». Other user accounts are set to only read the files.

As a user accesses each file, folder, registry key, printer, or an Active Directory object, the system checks its permissions. It supports inheritance for an object, e.g. files can inherit permissions from their parent folder. Also every object has an Owner which is the user account that can set ownership and change permissions.

If you are interested in managing NTFS permissions, refer to the following article:

Permission types

In short, there are two types of permissions — explicit permissions and inherited permissions.

There are two types of permissions: explicit permissions and inherited permissions.

Explicit permissions are those that are set by default on non-child objects when the object is created, or by user action on non-child, parent, or child objects.

Inherited permissions are those that are propagated to an object from a parent object. Inherited permissions ease the task of managing permissions and ensure consistency of permissions among all objects within a given container.

By default, objects within a container inherit the permissions from that container when the objects are created. For example, when you create a folder called MyFolder, all subfolders and files created within MyFolder automatically inherit the permissions from that folder. Therefore, MyFolder has explicit permissions, while all subfolders and files within it have inherited permissions.

Effective permissions are based on a local evaluation of the user’s group membership, user privileges, and permissions. The Effective Permissions tab of the Advanced Security Settings property page lists the permissions that would be granted to the selected group or user based solely on the permissions granted directly through group membership.

By resetting effective permissions, you will restore NTFS permissions of files and folders back to their default inherited permissions.

Quickly Reset NTFS Permissions in Windows 10

To reset NTFS Permissions in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open an elevated command prompt.
2. Run the following command to reset permissions for a file: icacls «full path to your file» /reset .
3. To reset permissions for a folder: icacls «full path to the folder» /reset .
4. To reset permissions for a folder, its files, and subfolders, run the command icacls «full path to the folder» /reset /t /c /l .

Substitute the example paths with the actual values matching your system.

Here are some screenshots.

Default (inherited) permissions:

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About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

11 thoughts on “ Quickly Reset NTFS Permissions in Windows 10 ”

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Thank You so much
You saved a huge time for me by only a command
Thaaaaaaaaaaaaanks

Doesn’t work on me: getting a lot of “Access denied” 🙁

Well, win10 64bit #1709.
I tried it on c:\, it resulting in:
Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 4308 files.
c:\>

Might this work on a system that doesn’t even boot into safe mode? So, can you run it from a running Windows system that is not the one you want to fix? I’m running an external Windows to go system, win 10 1607 and it’s my internal hard drive that I need to fix. Luckily, I can get into safe mode as an administrator, so I will try it. I deleted all the s-1-5 entries in that registry, not knowing that it was important.

Hello, I had an issue a couple Windows 10 updates ago, the permissions for D:\Program Files\ and sub folders changed (not Windows install drive btw) and some games complain when running they can’t open this or that file. I use the icacls command and it seems to work but after reboot the permissions are re-applied and the issue return. Any idea how to make them permanent?

What are permissions after the restart? To which state they go?