Taking ownership of files/folders protected by trusted installer

It may happen to you that when you want to delete or make any changes to a file or folder a window appears telling you can’t delete or make any changes to that file you will need permission from trusted installer

Trusted installer (windows module installer) is a windows built in service which acts as a system account for security purposes, this account owns most of the system files/folders that limits even administrator to have full access

To take ownership of such files you just have to make few clicks on your system

Note: to do so you need to have administrator’s privileges throughout the process

• ·         Right click the respective file and select properties

• ·         Select security tab the choose advanced

• ·         Click owners tab, you will see trusted installer as the current owner

• ·         Click the edit button to choose who should take the ownership of the files/folder ie             administrator or your user account

Problem solved

• Taking ownership by command prompt

All you have to do in this method is to run the dos command as administrator

• ·         To take ownership of files type the following command

            takeown /F “path of the file and its extension”

          eg: takeown /F “C:\Windows\addins\FXSEXT.ecf”

• ·         Taking ownership of folders type the following command

takeown /F “path of the folder or drive”   /A /R /D Y

          eg: takeown /F “C:\Windows\addins\” /A /R /D Y