I note that there have been several other posts on this subject but I cannot see one that solves my problem. I was transferring files from one external drive to another, I found a problem with a set of folders that I could not transfer with permission which should have been fine as I have administrator rights.
Looking at the folder permissions I found an unknown user account
Looking for solutions I tried to delete this account but was not allowed unless I turned off inherited permissions
I tried turning off the inheritance but this resulted in an error saying it failed to enumerate the number of objects in the container access denied.
Looking at some individual files (in one of the offending folders) properties showed 'Unable to display current owner' selecting the 'Change' option allowed me to change the file ownership to Everyone - Full Control and I could then move or delete the file.
There are quite a lot of files to do so is there a way to change all the affected folder & file permissions in one move?
The user profile with SID (security identifier) ending with 1001 is usually (not always) the first user account created when Windows is installed or a pre-installed Windows booted first time. In most cases this means it's your own user account.
You can check for which user account that SID belongs by giving the following command in Command Prompt:
Code:
[COLOR=#191919][FONT=monospace]wmic useraccount get name,sid[/FONT][/COLOR]
This example from my laptop, the first account I created when I installed Windows 8.1 was a local account called Admin which got the SID 1001:
SID ending with 500 belongs always to the built-in administrator account, SID ending with 501 to built-in Guest account, whether these two accounts are enabled and active or not. Other user accounts start from 1000.
What the above means is that you have most probably tried to remove your own account. Don't do that !
Thanks Kari,
I think the problem is that these files belong to my user on my old laptop, when I connect the USB drive to that laptop the user is identified.
All I need to know is - if I go back to the old laptop and use that to change the ownership and permissions how do I do that? I.e make all the files and directories available to Everyone or at least some sort of Public user so I can move the files over to the new drive on my new laptop?
Would the permissions be reset if I put the files through dropbox from my old laptop?
Downloading from cloud (OneDrive, Dropbox etc.) should also change the permissions, Windows treats those files then as any other file downloaded from the Internet.
Apologies for late response Kari, your advice worked a dream. I also tried using Dropbox on a couple of files which also worked fine, Dropbox solution was good if you only have a few files to fix and the faulty computer is not completely dead, but otherwise taking ownership was the ideal solution for all occasions.