Can't Run, Can't Delete, Can't Own

[John700]

I am running the below as the ADMINISTRATOR
I have another topic with a related issue, but this specific symptom I would like to have explained. There's many hits on Google, but most of them end with: "the permanent all fixing solution is to run takeown.exe"

Well, no.

There is something seriously wrong with access rights, and I guess NTFS plays a bad role here. Note the file concerned comes from other machines (other Windows 7 clients), all with NTFS disks, and compressed in a Zip file.

But question is: What does cause all of the below ? I need to stress this is run as administrator!

C:\Directory>del some.exe
C:\Directory\some.exe
Access is denied.

C:\Directory>takeown /F some.exe
ERROR: Access is denied.

C:\Directory>icacls some.exe
some.exe: Access is denied.
Successfully processed 0 files; Failed processing 1 files

C:\Directory>some.exe
Access is denied.

C:\Directory>attrib some.exe
A C:\Directory\some.exe

C:\Directory>

 

[TrainableMan]

So you have a file call Some.exe that you are trying to delete from C:\directory? It is possible that the file is somewhere in the registry getting a protected status or it is actually in use some other way.

I suggest you install Unlocker & use it to Delete the file if that is your goal. It will try to free the locking handles & delete it and if that fails you can set Unlocker to delete it on reboot.

Unlocker is listed in our Freeware DB

 

[John700]

So you have a file call Some.exe that you are trying to delete from C:\directory? It is possible that the file is somewhere in the registry getting a protected status or it is actually in use some other way.

I suggest you install Unlocker & use it to Delete the file if that is your goal. It will try to free the locking handles & delete it and if that fails you can set Unlocker to delete it on reboot.

Unlocker is listed in our Freeware DB

Thanks for the feedback. The main issue is that I can not re-own the file, as is illustrated. I thought that on itself would obviously be the biggest issue, if one is administrator.
But, I would lie stating that, because I can't even RUN the file, as administrator.

Not being able to delete is a minor concern, it just shows there is an issue deleting as well. But, it is true that locking may be involved. My question is, can you use Unlocker to be able to re-own files ?

And, all of this while being administrator.

What I think is that locking caused the owner to be incorrectly set. But, at what point ?
And, how do I fix that ?

Note I have re-installed Windows on that machine, as a solution for this problem.

 

[TrainableMan]

Unlocker has nothing to do with ownership; it has to do with the file being "in use". If a file has a locking handle on it then it cannot be deleted.

Ownership is much more complicated; for the most part if you created it on this machine while logged in to your loginID then you own it. But if it was created on a different machine or is in a directory protected by the system (such as the root directory c:\ ) or a folder where you do not have certain privileges then you can't do those things.

To keep things consistent and because one computer can have multiple users, YOUR files should really be under YOUR folders C:\Users\{yourloginID}\ , for example mine might be found in C:\Users\TrainableMan\Documents or C:\Users\TrainableMan\Downloads.

I can't say I totally understand ownership but when I put my files where W7 expects them I rarely need Unlocker or TakeOwn & I can't say I've had problems like you seem to be having.

 

[John700]

I understand.

The files I have issues with, all come from a Zip file created on another machine.
But, most files from this Zip do not have these issues.

 

[TrainableMan]

Since they came from another computer then you, even as an ADMIN may not have permissions to the file, thus the reason Take ownership is suggested.

In Windows Explorer RIGHT-click on one of the problem programs & chose properties. Go to the SECURITY tab and in the "Group or user names" section scroll to your login (if it exists) then use something like the snipping tool to take a screenshot and attach it here.

Reference: How to take ownership and change permissions of files