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Help my Entire account is gone after following this advice
i am sure that was not the goal. but it did happen i am afraid.

I am currently trying to solve icons not showing up on my external drive.
I think it might have to do with user permissions? Because nothing seems to refresh.

So what i tried to do is give all users full permission on that drive.
When i do that this random ID of a user pops up. That i can then remove.
But this random user with a random number still pops op on sub folders when i check there security.

I think the problem of this is. That when i set the permissions for all users. And remove this random user. For some reason right after. Everything is reset to the old setting again. Even after clicking apply. Its like the drive just keeps hard resetting itself whenever i try to do something.

I also have to give administrator rights for everything i do on the drive. Its very annoying. even when i change names etc.

extra visual info: http://i.imgur.com/D7ITasX.png

Regedit info: http://i.imgur.com/ks4iRkf.png

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  • What command are you using exactly for taking ownership of all files and folders on the drive?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 14:31
  • Not sure what you mean by that sorry. Right clicked the folder and then went to the security tab. There where it says permissions for users. I ticked all of them on allow. Then when i apply it starts loading through all the sub folders but then just resets the permissions back to before. But with the exception of a new strange user id that is added. This user id also shows up before all this when i right click a folder inside the drive. I was trying to remove that before but then i get the following error. i.imgur.com/AWIPBmc.png Thank you for helping!
    – Kus
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 14:37
  • You indicated you gave all users full permission on the drive. I asked how you did this.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 16:08
  • Oh i meant i gave the "user" part a tick for allow on every part that you can. on the first picture. there were it says allow and disallow. i put them all on allow when i do edit. but it just sets it back and it makes a new random user.
    – Kus
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 16:11
  • This just gives permission not ownership of the drive. At some a user from another Windows installation took ownership of the root directory, Windows respects this ownership although its unable to determine who owns it.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 16:12

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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If all you need to do is properly give permission rights, to specific users, over a drive then I recommend using a "Take Ownership" context menu. It will save you dozens of clicks and a reboot or two.

It's worked for me in regards to internal/external drives and foreign/native users. Needless to say I haven't used anything else for quite some time. You can take ownership of files/folders in bulk and I've found it's more efficient at granting admin privileges than manually doing it.

It's a 1KB file so it doesn't take longer than 5 minutes to get the job done (depending on how many files you're taking ownership of). Check it out here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/add-take-ownership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

--- Raw info ---

Add Context Menu by saving as .Reg file, then execute.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas]
@="Take Ownership"
"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas\command]
@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"
"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"

If you change your mind you can remove the context menu this way:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas]

[-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas]
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Here are some solutions:

  1. You format the drive (only do this if there is no important files onboard, or you've copied them off)

  2. You change the ownership of the drive to you, then remove the user enter image description here

  3. If the drive gets moved from PC to PC, make sure no other PC is writing permissions to the drive.

  4. Check in the registry, under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList that there is no user with that ID there (if there is, check for it in control userpasswords2 or in the Local Users and groups manager mmc) enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

If there is no other user there, aside from yourself, Administrator and Guest, feel free to delete the registry key and restart.

PS: I'm logged in as the user Administrator so your config might look different

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  • Leave the other 3, just remove the whole key and restart. the advanced permissions should remove the unknown account and leave the drive purged of that account. the restart is essential. then try the removal of permissions
    – td512
    Commented Apr 9, 2015 at 20:16
  • Omg ... omg.... omg... i restarted my pc and everything reset. all my desktop gone. everything is gone. all my stuff. what am i supposed to do now.
    – Kus
    Commented Apr 10, 2015 at 10:16
  • Are you sure that you removed the long key? press CTRL+ALT+DEL and start Task Manager, check if explorer is stuck. if it is, kill it (right click on explorer, click end process) then restart explorer (File -> New Task) type explorer, hit enter. your desktop should be still there, as long as you didn't remove the key containing your user profile
    – td512
    Commented Apr 12, 2015 at 5:58

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