You need to add an access control entry that grants you sufficient control, but to do that you first need to be the owner of the file. Administrators can make themselves the owner of any file, but the process doing the adjustment must have the SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege
privilege enabled. Enabling that requires fiddling with unmanaged code, which Lee Holmes has done for us. I've reformatted and slightly tweaked his script, which you will need to save to a file (e.g. privs.ps1
):
param( ## The privilege to adjust. This set is taken from
## http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb530716(VS.85).aspx
[ValidateSet(
"SeAssignPrimaryTokenPrivilege", "SeAuditPrivilege", "SeBackupPrivilege",
"SeChangeNotifyPrivilege", "SeCreateGlobalPrivilege", "SeCreatePagefilePrivilege",
"SeCreatePermanentPrivilege", "SeCreateSymbolicLinkPrivilege", "SeCreateTokenPrivilege",
"SeDebugPrivilege", "SeEnableDelegationPrivilege", "SeImpersonatePrivilege", "SeIncreaseBasePriorityPrivilege",
"SeIncreaseQuotaPrivilege", "SeIncreaseWorkingSetPrivilege", "SeLoadDriverPrivilege",
"SeLockMemoryPrivilege", "SeMachineAccountPrivilege", "SeManageVolumePrivilege",
"SeProfileSingleProcessPrivilege", "SeRelabelPrivilege", "SeRemoteShutdownPrivilege",
"SeRestorePrivilege", "SeSecurityPrivilege", "SeShutdownPrivilege", "SeSyncAgentPrivilege",
"SeSystemEnvironmentPrivilege", "SeSystemProfilePrivilege", "SeSystemtimePrivilege",
"SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege", "SeTcbPrivilege", "SeTimeZonePrivilege", "SeTrustedCredManAccessPrivilege",
"SeUndockPrivilege", "SeUnsolicitedInputPrivilege")]
$Privilege,
$ProcessId = $pid,
[Switch] $Disable
)
$definition = @'
using System;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
public class AdjPriv
{
[DllImport("advapi32.dll", ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern bool AdjustTokenPrivileges(IntPtr htok, bool disall,
ref TokPriv1Luid newst, int len, IntPtr prev, IntPtr relen);
[DllImport("advapi32.dll", ExactSpelling = true, SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern bool OpenProcessToken(IntPtr h, int acc, ref IntPtr phtok);
[DllImport("advapi32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
internal static extern bool LookupPrivilegeValue(string host, string name, ref long pluid);
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)]
internal struct TokPriv1Luid
{
public int Count;
public long Luid;
public int Attr;
}
internal const int SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED = 0x00000002;
internal const int SE_PRIVILEGE_DISABLED = 0x00000000;
internal const int TOKEN_QUERY = 0x00000008;
internal const int TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES = 0x00000020;
public static bool EnablePrivilege(long processHandle, string privilege, bool disable)
{
bool retVal;
TokPriv1Luid tp;
IntPtr hproc = new IntPtr(processHandle);
IntPtr htok = IntPtr.Zero;
retVal = OpenProcessToken(hproc, TOKEN_ADJUST_PRIVILEGES | TOKEN_QUERY, ref htok);
tp.Count = 1;
tp.Luid = 0;
if(disable)
{
tp.Attr = SE_PRIVILEGE_DISABLED;
}
else
{
tp.Attr = SE_PRIVILEGE_ENABLED;
}
retVal = LookupPrivilegeValue(null, privilege, ref tp.Luid);
retVal = AdjustTokenPrivileges(htok, false, ref tp, 0, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);
return retVal;
}
}
'@
$processHandle = (Get-Process -id $ProcessId).Handle
try { Add-Type $definition } catch {}
[AdjPriv]::EnablePrivilege($processHandle, $Privilege, $Disable)
If you haven't already, you'll need to follow the instructions in the Enabling Scripts section of the PowerShell tag wiki. Then we can put everything together:
.\privs.ps1 -Privilege SeTakeOwnershipPrivilege
$acl = Get-Acl C:\Windows\HelpPane.exe
$acl.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]::new('Administrators'))
$rule = [System.Security.AccessControl.FileSystemAccessRule]::new('Administrators', 'FullControl', 'None', 'None', 'Allow')
$acl.AddAccessRule($rule)
Set-Acl C:\Windows\HelpPane.exe $acl
That adjusts the ACL, giving you permission to rename the file:
Rename-Item C:\Windows\HelpPane.exe HelpPane_.exe