Privacy and Security Change Owner of File, Folder, Drive, or Registry Key in Windows 11

Access Control Overview

Learn about access control in Windows, which is the process of authorizing users, groups, and computers to access objects on the network or computer.

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Managing Object Ownership

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Take Ownership of a File or Folder

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You must be signed in as an administrator, current owner, or have "full control" permissions to change the owner of a file, folder, drive, or registry key.

Do not change the owner of the Windows drive to avoid breaking Windows.

You will need to click/tap on Show more options first by default, then click/tap on Change Owner.

Add Change Owner to Context Menu in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to add Change Owner to the context menu of all files, folders, and drives for all users in Windows 10 and Windows 11. An owner is assigned to an object when that object is created. By default, the owner is the creator of the object. No matter what permissions are...

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• In File Explorer (Win+E), right click on the file or folder you want to change the owner of, and click/tap on Properties.
• In Registry Editor (regedit.exe), right click on a registry key you want to change the owner of, and click/tap on Permissions.

If you see "You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object", then will need to change the owner to your account at step 5.

You will see "Unable to display current owner" when you see "You must have Read permissions to view the properties of this object" in step 2.

• If you want to select a specific user or group as the owner, click/tap on the Advanced button.
• If you want to set Administrators as the owner, type Administrators in the "Enter the object name to select" box, click/tap on Check Names, and skip to step 6.
• If you want to set TrustedInstaller as the owner, type NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller in the "Enter the object name to select" box, click/tap on Check Names, and skip to step 6.

1. Click/tap on the Find Now button.
2. Under "Search results" select a user or group in the 'Name" column you want as the owner.
3. Click/tap on OK.

If you check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects, it will also change the owner of all subkeys, or subfiles and subfolders in this object.

takeown

Reference article for the takeown command, which enables an administrator to recover access to a file that was previously denied.

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Substitute <full path of file with extension> in the commands above with the actual full path of the file with extension you want to change the owner of.

Substitute <full path of folder or drive> in the commands above with the actual full path of the folder or drive you want to change the owner of.

For example:

File: takeown /f "D:\Folder\File.txt"

Folder only: takeown /f "D:\Folder"

Folder and subfolders and files: takeown /f "D:\Folder" /r /d y

Drive only: takeown /f "D:"

Drive and subfolders and files: takeown /f "D:" /r /d y

icacls

Reference article for the icacls command, which displays or modifies discretionary access control lists (DACL) on specified files, and applies stored DACLs to files in specified directories.

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Substitute <full path of file with extension> in the commands above with the actual full path of the file with extension you want to change the owner of.

Substitute <full path of folder or drive> in the commands above with the actual full path of the folder or drive you want to change the owner of.

Substitute <user or group> in the commands above with the name of the user account (ex: "Brink") or group (ex: "Administrators") you want as the owner.

For example:

File: icacls "D:\Folder\File.txt" /setowner "Administrators" /t /c

Folder only: icacls "D:\Folder" /setowner "Administrators" /c

Folder and subfolders and files: icacls "D:\Folder" /setowner "Administrators" /t /c

Drive only: icacls "D:" /setowner "Administrators" /c

Drive and subfolders and files: icacls "D:" /setowner "Administrators" /c

Set-Acl (Microsoft.PowerShell.Security) - PowerShell

This cmdlet is only available on the Windows platform. The Set-Acl cmdlet changes the security descriptor of a specified item, such as a file or a registry key, to match the values in a security descriptor that you supply. To use Set-Acl, use the Path or InputObject parameter to identify the...

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Set-Acl -Path "<full path of file with extension>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of file with extension>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "<user or group>"); $_ })

Set-Acl -Path "<full path of file with extension>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of file with extension>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "Administrators"); $_ })

Set-Acl -Path "<full path of file with extension>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of file with extension>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller"); $_ })

Set-Acl -Path "<full path of folder or drive>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of folder or drive>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "<user or group>"); $_ })

Set-Acl -Path "<full path of folder or drive>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of folder or drive>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "Administrators"); $_ })

Set-Acl -Path "<full path of folder or drive>" -AclObject (Get-Acl "<full path of folder or drive>" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller"); $_ })

Substitute <full path of file with extension> in the commands above with the actual full path of the file with extension you want to change the owner of.

Substitute <full path of folder or drive> in the commands above with the actual full path of the folder or drive you want to change the owner of.

Substitute <user or group> in the commands above with the name of the user account (ex: "Brink") or group (ex: "Administrators") you want as the owner.

For example:

File: Set-Acl -Path "D:\Folder\File.txt" -AclObject (Get-Acl "D:\Folder\File.txt" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "Administrators"); $_ })

Folder only: Set-Acl -Path "D:\Folder" -AclObject (Get-Acl "D:\Folder" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "Administrators"); $_ })

Drive only: Set-Acl -Path D:" -AclObject (Get-Acl "D:" | ForEach-Object { $_.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]" "Administrators"); $_ })

Set-Acl (Microsoft.PowerShell.Security) - PowerShell

This cmdlet is only available on the Windows platform. The Set-Acl cmdlet changes the security descriptor of a specified item, such as a file or a registry key, to match the values in a security descriptor that you supply. To use Set-Acl, use the Path or InputObject parameter to identify the...

learn.microsoft.com

Substitute <branch> in the commands above with the actual HKCR (HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT), HKCU (HKEY_CURRENT_USER), HKLM (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE), HKU (HKEY_USERS), or HKCC (HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG) branch the key is in.

Substitute <key path> in the commands above with the rest of the path of the registry key.

Substitute <user or group> in the command above with the name of the user account (ex: "Brink") or group (ex: "Administrators") you want as the owner.

For example:

Set-Acl -"HKCU:\Control Panel\ExampleKey"; $acl.SetOwner([System.Security.Principal.NTAccount]"Administrators"); Set-Acl "HKCU:\Control Panel\ExampleKey" $acl