Windows 7 Access Denied: Permission & Ownership

By Nakodari on Oct 26 2009 99 Comments

If you are getting Access Denied error in Windows 7 then you are not alone. This error is quite common and occurs due to permission issues. There are some files and folders that are meant only for Administrators to access, if you are not an administrator then you cannot access it and will instead get Access Denied error.

To enhance security Microsoft has even denied Administrators access to some folders. The way to fix this error is to give yourself permission to access the file or folder. This can be done by going to Properties and then navigating to Security tab.

Remember that we are taking about two different things – Permission and Ownership. By giving all permission to your account, you will be able to get complete control of a folder. But in some cases only the owner can assign the permission for various users, we will also cover how you can change the ownership.

Changing Ownership

First, lets talk about ownership. To change ownership, right-click any file or folder, select Properties, and go to Security tab. Now click the Advanced button(shown in the screenshot below).

Advanced Properties Windows 7

Next, you need to go to Owner tab and hit the Edit button. Then in the new dialog window choose the new owner and then click OK.

Owner Windows 7

Changing Permission

If you are an administrator and cannot access a folder, this is due to permission error. To give complete permission to yourself, right-click the file or folder and select Properties. Now go to Security tab, and hit the Edit button.

Here select your username(account) and check the Full Control checkbox. When done, hit OK. Note that when you will check the Full Control checkbox, all others will be automatically checked too.

Update: This method is not working for most users. Since many folders and files are locked, the only way to access them is to first unlock them using LockHunter.

Windows 7 Full control

Now go ahead and open the file or folder and you will be able to access it. Note that Permissions is a great way to lock your folder too, go here to learn more about how to lock your folder.

Enjoy!

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  • http://www.facebook.com/XilverGt2 Marco Antonio Tapia Nuñez

    great post thanks

  • mikeb333

    This is not working for me in Win7. I changed ownership of C:ProgramDataStart Menu to me and then closed properties, re-opened and changed my permissions to full control and still get access denied. WHen I re-check properties/security/advanced/owner, it says I am the owner now but it is still locked.
    Suggestions?

  • Mr. Weather

    I have the same problem. I think this is caused by the same mechanism that requires me to click OK to some actions even though I'm a member of the local admins group. For some reason a local admin isn't a local admin. This crap used to be so simple.

  • billmac99

    I have been having similar problems and in general you may still be denied access to the file if you double click it to open with the default program or try to access it from an already open application because in some cases (I have not worked out which yet) even if you are the owner you still need to start the application program by right clicking and running as administrator before trying to open the file.
    Even more confusing I have found that using basic programs like notepad and wordpad that the permissions on a new file save vary depending on the folder I save it to and in some situations even although the file appears to have been saved if you then check the folder the file is not there! No warning is given that the file is not saved. I also encountered this problem when printing to XPS and no file is saved.

  • billmac99

    I have been having similar problems and in general you may still be denied access to the file if you double click it to open with the default program or try to access it from an already open application because in some cases (I have not worked out which yet) even if you are the owner you still need to start the application program by right clicking and running as administrator before trying to open the file.
    Even more confusing I have found that using basic programs like notepad and wordpad that the permissions on a new file save vary depending on the folder I save it to and in some situations even although the file appears to have been saved if you then check the folder the file is not there! No warning is given that the file is not saved. I also encountered this problem when printing to XPS and no file is saved.

  • billmac99

    I have been having similar problems and in general you may still be denied access to the file if you double click it to open with the default program or try to access it from an already open application because in some cases (I have not worked out which yet) even if you are the owner you still need to start the application program by right clicking and running as administrator before trying to open the file.
    Even more confusing I have found that using basic programs like notepad and wordpad that the permissions on a new file save vary depending on the folder I save it to and in some situations even although the file appears to have been saved if you then check the folder the file is not there! No warning is given that the file is not saved. I also encountered this problem when printing to XPS and no file is saved.

  • cata22h

    This doesn't work for me: when I click “OK” or “Apply” to change my own permissions, (as administrator and owner) I get a nice “access denied” … Only the “cancel” option gets me out of there.

    • hsta

      mine is also the same case.pls check and give a way out.

      • Nakodari

        Maybe you guys are not logged in as Administrator? Which files are you trying to access that gives such error? Some files are not meant to be accessed by regular users.

        • Ann

          I'm not sure I understand the distinction. In the User Accounts control panel, the profile I use is an “Administrator” account, not a “Standard User”. But when I attempt to assign Full Control to C:Documents and Settings, I get the “Access denied” error. Yet oddly in the Security tab for this folder, the Admin group has all boxes checked except “Special”. Background: I'm trying to back up certain application prefs files like browser bookmarks that at least in XP were tucked into folders like Application Data.

          • Nakodari

            C:Documents and Settings does not exist as a folder in Windows 7. I think you migrated from Windows XP. In Windows 7, the folder is: C:Users{Username}Documents

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  • Mr. Guest

    Useless post. Access denied is what I get. This is such bull crap.

  • DJ

    I agree, this doesn't work at all. This has just wasted alot of my time. I am trying to access documents/settings folder from an external laptop hardrive that I need some info off of. All I get is Access denied and I have tried every possible combination of solutions listed.

  • bpbrian

    I followed the instructions to the letter and even followed the supplied pictures, and still I get Access Denied to the Documents and Setting folder. Why should we have to download a third party application to access our own files? Is this application safe?

  • Philip

    I can't unlock a specific folder in Win7. It's under WindowsWinSxS. Anyone know how to unlock WinSxS? Or Even unlock the Windows folder would be nice!

  • Rick

    The procedure described in the article worked for me. I ignored the rude comments posted above by people who don't appreciate the efforts of others. It only takes a few seconds to test it.

    In my new install of Windows 7 I opened a file in Notepad that was on a USB drive. The file was created on my XP machine, since I never used Vista. I made some changes to the file and was surprised to find that I couldn't save it (Access Denied error), even though my user is in the Adminstrators group and the Administrators group already had full control.

    As suggested in this article, I changed permissions for the specific user I was logged in as. In this case I gave that user Modify permission. Notepad was still open the whole time. I was then able to save the updated file without a problem.

  • Lux I

    I got this to work as well. Thanks!

  • gamenomad

    Doesn't work for me. I've got a bad HD backup in my USB external drive containing everything that was in my internal HD. Now everything is back to normal and I want to delete the now useless backup taking all my space. Tried everything, from authorizations to '' trying to force remove using my Ubuntu ''. Still can't delete. The only difference after trying to delete using ubuntu is that now they are in a folder containing rejected files. Windows sucks! You can't control your own files! M$ does!
    If I could I would thrash that Windows thing…

    • Prabhu

      happy

  • Nico Dahlmann

    Doesn't work for me neither. Total waste of time.

  • http://twitter.com/Truefire_ Robbie Pence

    Uh..
    it worked for me.

  • JD

    Thanks for the help, but why are we putting up with this?
    Would you own a refrigerator that had a secret compartment in it that you couldn't access? Or a bed that only allowed you to sleep on one side, unless you did a special dance to allow entry? NO, you wouldn't. Why are we letting Micro$oft treat its customers like this? I paid $900 for a computer that I alone use and the OS won't let me access my own dang files!!! mIcRoSoFt Sux Please, someone make a better OS Pleeeaasssse!

  • Rich

    This worked great for me. I was having a problem editing the true/false values (both need to be true to ad mods) in the gamedata line of the “fsgame” file in the game Stalker Call of Pripyat. Before applying the above suggestions I kept getting an access denied message everytime I would edit in notepad and attempt to save even though I was the system administrator. Make sure the administrator and user(s) have permission, ownership and “full control” assuming its your computer and you are one and the same entity or comfortable with all users having this. Thanks for the fix! Nice to know others out there are thinking 'cause Windows just keeps on suckin'. A pig in a tuxedo is still a pig.

  • jason

    it's so dumb of windows 7
    cause their like your own files but you cant get access to them
    mine still does not work!!
    p.s never give up !!
    if you duds have a video on how to do it pls send me a mail

  • LP

    Same issue. Only I've noticed that who ever I change the owner of the file to, the error changes as well.
    “You need permission to perform this action
    Your require permission from *Insert File Owner's name here* to make changes to this file”

    Very, very, very annoying.

  • TheDude

    Thanks for the guide, but it’s proved useless for me too.

    Been messing with PCs since the first versions of DOS… But it still doesn’t count for poo, when M$ is still doing stupid stuff like this. I’m sure it’s not stupid that it’s happening, it’ll be for some particular reason… But they’ve made it such an obscure reason & problem that we’re being locked-out of our own damn software!!

  • http://Southernpacificdigital.com Peter

    Go to security
    If there’s a “Continue Button” with a shield click on it
    Highlight whatever you named the computer and Tick “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects (should be second on the list, but do this before Administrators first).
    Click on “Apply”.
    Highlight Administrators and then Tick “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects
    (look further down the page on the left)
    Click on “Apply”.

    Best of Luck
    Peter

  • dim

    When i first tried to change permissions on a system file i saw that only TrustedInstaller had Full Control ticked.
    So i changed the ownership to (Username\Administrators) to be able to gain full control myself.

    For security reasons i want to untick Full Control on me again and restore permissions to default.
    I ve managed how to give ownership back to TrustedInstaller on this file but now i can’t untick Full Control on (Username\Administrators) and leave “Read & Execute” permission only as it is on every other system file.

    Does anybody know the right procedure or any command on cmd how to restore to default permissions on a single file?

  • Kelly

    Thanks a lot for this. It saved me from pulling my hair out!

  • Karl

    ANTIVIRUS Software!!!! I had a copy of my old windows harddrive on a non-OS drive that had a “Windows folder” and even though I took ownership and set the correct permissions, I couldn’t delete the files. “ACCESS DENIED”. I turned off Norton and was able to delete everything. No unlocker or lockhunter required. I also remove trusted installer from the permissions list, but this didn’t help with antivirus on.

  • Mark Toomey

    Karl, thanks for that post with regard to Anti-Virus. I was getting quite frustrated as have others until I unloaded F-Secure and was then able to change ownership and permissions and rename my file (in this case the C:\Windows\System32\utilman.exe which has an annoying habit of inadvertently activating accessibility programs such as narration!).

    :)

  • Userme

    What about when you right click on properties of the Folder and the menu that pops up has only 2 options – ‘General ‘ and ‘Previous Options’. How do you go about changing the access then ?

  • Richard

    Excellent post – can crack open all the Windows files inc System Volume etc
    Thanks

  • http://www.konuttakas.com Mehmet Erbilgin

    ok. its work perfectly.
    thanks.

  • Dharmesh

    i have A problem ,when I open d drive, E drive ; Error was throw, Error Was D Is not accessible. you might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have permissions

    so give it’s solution argent..

  • donbudz

    NONE OF THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THIS PAGE WORKED FOR ALL FOLDERS!!! BUT, I FOUND A SOLUTION FOR “ALL” FILES AND FOLDERS… A SIMPLE REG FILE THAT ADDS “GRANT ADMIN FULL CONTROL” TO YOUR RIGHT CLICK CONTEXT MENU… AND IT WORKED. HERE IS THE LINK http://depositfiles.com/en/files/rz7avhaft THE FILE YOUR LOOKING FOR IS CALLED “GrantAdminFullControl.reg” IT SEEMS TO BE MICROSOFT CERTIFIED TOO!! REMEMBER THIS ADDS “GRANT ADMINISTRATOR FULL CONTROL” TO THE RIGHT CLICK OPTION. GOOD LUCK

  • http://DONSWEBDESIGNS.COM DONBUDZ

    OMG!!! DUDE, “To change ownership, right-click any file or folder” does not work! If you all want access to all files and folders “right click on DRIVE C!!! Then follow this gentlemans instructions. You can right click on “Documents and Settings” all day and set “Allow full control” and it will not work until you go to the top of the tree, in other words “right click on the entire drive c” BOOM you have it. One little word “any” caused me to screw with this method for 2days! Bad doodoo man! BTW dont use the reg file i posted, it worked for going thru folders but did not work for installs and command prompt and a few other things still gave “access denied error, so ignore the previous comment by me. Just “RIGHT CLICK ON DRIVE C” then follow the instructions on changing owner and permissions on this page. Peace out people!

  • Russell

    It did not work for me. I’m so disappointed. I had edited some of these photos and documents, then because of a problem, had to restore my computer to it’s original state. Mind you, these are files that I own, personal photos that I scanned and saved to folders on my previous XP computers. When I downloaded my backup files from Mozy and got them all in place, I could not edit them. Kept getting the “you can’t do that” message. I went through the whole procedure, listed here and got the same results. I am the owner of my computer and the files and I am so disappointed in this operating system.

  • Gil

    I had to tinker to get it to work. I had an error on installation of a program stating that I didn’t have write permission in Program Files. I created a directory under Program Files and tried to follow the above instructions. After changing ownership to me I had to go to the Effective Permissions tab and add my user with full priviliges and only then go to the security tab and change them there and it stuck! Sorry for no step-by-step but try the “Effective Permissions” tab.

  • imor

    Excellent!

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  • http://www.egyptcars.tk Mohamed

    Dear sir,

    I would like to thank you a lot its work successfully

    Mohamed Elwardany

  • http://www.sandiegohostels.org Iain

    I did find that the “Documents and Settings” folder that was used by previous versions of Windows is no longer used with Windows 7. This information is now stored in the “Users” folder on the root of the C drive.

    You may notice that there is a little lock icon on the Documents and Settings folder and that even the Admin cannot access it. After setting a couple of applications up to go to the users folder instead of the Documents and Settings folder, we were able to work out the issues that we have been experiencing. Hope that helpful for some of you…

  • http://rdsmarb.webs.com Savio
  • Chris M

    I upgraded from XP SP2 to WIN7 Ultimate 64. I used PCmover WIN7 assistant to migrate programs and files after the update. Everything seemed to be ok however the MY Documents fold is almost entirely encrypted except for a few choice files here and there. This goes for almost any file type, jPG’s, Word Docs, PDF’s etc. All of which, despite numerous attempts I cannot open due to “Access Rights” issues. I have done every kind of Security granting imaginable and worked every fix I could find. ANy ideas why this happened ? I now see that my backup drive (which is attached to the WIN7 computer) will not allow me to open the saved documents in the MY DOCUMENTS folder , I tried to connect via a Laptop with XP and WIN 7 has more or less restricted all the files on the backup drive as well ? Nice job MS, once again. I tried MS support and their response was that I most likley used some sort of Encryption software. I explained to the nice lady from India that in fact I had not used any encryption software and that it was fairly sporadic as about 1/3 of the files in the MY Documents directory were not effected. Any ideas ?

  • bhaskar

    iam cannot access in d:\ora8,& ora6. folders when i lock the to folder bymistked “system”user locked waht should i do now

  • http://www.digriz.com Daniel DiGriz
  • Gurunath

    This worked for me Thanks a ton!

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  • Icecold

    Thank you for the guide, worked perfectly for me too.

  • test

    aaaa

  • Win7SucksHooray

    I wanted to find a text string inside a .ini file and I was losing my patience with Windows 7 search, so I decided to give SuperFinder a try to see if whenever I need to do a search like this I don’t have to go through a manual. Little I knew that I was going to stumble upon another Win7 major annoyance.

    I was unable to install the application as Comodo Antivirus said it had some virus. Ok, been there, done that. Let’s uninstall and try again with the antivirus disabled.

    Uninstall left behind these 2 folders with one of the files that Comodo said to be a virus:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\FSL\SuperFinder\is-IS6M.tmp

    Ok, whatever, let’s just delete the FSL folder and try installing again.

    “Access denied” on the file. My user is Administrator.

    Things I’ve tried:

    - The damn antivirus must have locked it. Let’s unlock it, remove it from the pending files, un-sandbox it, disable the antivrus. Nope. “Access denied”.

    - Let’s disable Windows beloved UAC. Nope. “Access denied”.

    - Setting permissions in the file’s Security tab. Nope. “You do not have permission to view or edit this object’s permission settings”.

    - Change ownership of all files in C: to Administrator. Nope. It took forever and failed for a bunch of files including the one I wanted. “Access denied”, of course.

    - Take ownership of the file. Nope. “Access denied” on command line commands and through the Explorer context menu option “Take ownership” added with Ultimate Windows Tweaker. I guess the menu command just executed the same commands I tried in the prompt.

    - Activated the Windows built-in Administrator account using Ultimate Windows Tweaker. Ah, God mode!! Nope. You know what.

    - Start Windows in safe mode and delete the #@!*#! file. Nope. The file was deleted. Yes, you read it right, it was deleted. But it was back when I restarted Windows in normal mode. Great! This OS is haunted with ghosts, files appear and disappear misteriously. Like when UAC puts them in the Virtual Store folder but you can see them in the folder where you could swear you put them when you go through a File Save/Open dialog box. Now you see it, now you don’t. (by the way, just disable UAC to solve this one, don’t start pulling you hair out).

    - Start Windows in safe mode again and shift-delete the FSL top folder (the permissions problem was only on the file). Restart Windows in normal mode and login with the BS God mode Administrator account. The folders and file were gone. Login with my regular not-so-much-administrator account. Solved. By now it would be stupid to be happy.

    I’ve migrated to Win7 from XP64 a few of months ago, I had been delaying it as much as possible since I had tried Win7 before and was aware that despite the many improvements some things are just unexplainable. Like the setbacks in search usability, the start menu many bugs in maintaining the shortcuts, and of course these permission problems.

    I’ve tried also Mac OS X for the first time recently and I must say that I don’t see the point of people that say they’ll migrate to Mac to get away from Win 7. Fancy 3D shining task bar with genie fumes icons mixed with vintage top menu bar and schizofrenic window controls and behaviours, in an overall UI which definition doesn’t seem to include consistency as a factor of usability. Super-cool new features like stacks that have been around in windows since forever…

    Anyway, no point in going Mac for the UI if it’s coming to meet you in Windows. The Win7 default taskbar is now all application icons with no labels, which is much better because it uses two step window selection and brings back application-oriented work instead of document-oriented. Much simpler than one straight click on the taskbar in the window that you want.

    But Microsoft degrading Windows by copying Mac OS features into it is another topic. Hopefully this trend of super-stylization started with Matrix and over-blown in CSI, adopted in OSes to boost impulse purchases, will go away sometime soon and usability, content and productivity will be more valued again.

    Oh, and about the search, I’m stuck with typing something like ‘*.ini content: “timeout”‘. Feels like I’m in the good old cryptic Unix prompt. Hmmm… maybe I should give Linux a try. Or just stick with bragging about how I can type incredibly complicated commands to perform tasks that once upon a time were so simple that a monkey could do it.

  • Win7SucksHooray

    Nope. Never got a message saying the file was in use like it happens in other situations. The main suspect was the antivirus and i’ve disabled it.

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