Take and Grant Full Control Permissions and Ownership in Windows 7 or Vista Right Click Menu
In order to ensure greater security and reliability of Windows operating systems such as Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, a lot of system files have been assigned and granted ownership and full control permissions to TrustedInstaller and has special restricted permissions to all other users, including administrators. While the design makes accidental deletion or change to system files, it makes job of technical users harder though.
Manually take ownership and grant full control permissions of the files (including executables) and folders to administrators or other users or groups are messy multiple steps process in Windows. There are multiple ways to make grant full control permissions and ownership to administrators easier, such as using Take Control Of command script or manually issue takeown and icacls commands in Command Prompt window. It’s also possible to add a right click menu item to contextual menu that appears when user right clicks on files and folders, that automatically take full control and ownership of the selected files or folders as administrators.
In order to add a “Grant Admin Full Control” command to Windows right click menu, just download the following registry registration entries file, and double click on the GrantAdminFullControl.reg to merge new registry keys and values to system. The registry entries have been updated from previous version. It works on both 32-bit (x86) and 64-bit (x64) OS and is non-recursive.
Download GrantAdminFullControl.reg
Tip: It’s possible to change “Grant Admin Full Control” to any name you like if it’s not to your liking. To change the name on the right click menu, just edit the .reg file, and replace the three Grant Admin Full Control string in the text file to your prefer name, such as Take Full Control Permissions, Grant Administrators Full Permissions, Give Administrators Full Control, Grant Administrator Rights and etc.
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Entries (RSS)
January 24th, 2010 21:05
Thanks so much
I needed to gain access to my password protected Docs folder in the HD from my old Win XP PC through my new laptop running Windows 7 Home Premium. Instead of having to gain ownership of each file individually this allowed me to do it in one go – it took about a minute to gain access to 9.05 GB of documents. Genius!!!
Now if someone can make WMP 10 work on Windows 7 without downgrading to the 32 bit OS my life will be complete!
January 15th, 2010 20:17
to delete it open regedit the go to edit find in find type grant and press enter then delete every registry you’ll see then go to edit and press find next delete it also do it until a these reg appear (DEFAULT
CODE
STATE)
Dont delete those.
December 21st, 2009 23:44
Thanks so much for this, I took it one step further. I had a bunch of picture files that went from XP to Vista Ult to Win 7 Ult. In win7 admins had full control and even though my user was in admin groups, I couldn’t even preview the picture files and of course you can’t multi-select to update the security on picture files… really? So I edited this reg file changed adminsitrators to my username and added that to my reg .. mahe it Grant Me Full Control .. works perfectly. I can see my picture files now.. THANK YOU!!
December 19th, 2009 04:33
THANK YOU SO EFFING MUCH!
December 18th, 2009 14:22
this worked great for me!
i had to replace my win xp pc and my folder was set to private so even if i set me as the new owner, it still denies my access
but this worked perfectly, one click and i gain access! woo!
thanks!
December 17th, 2009 11:04
This didn’t work for me! ;(
December 15th, 2009 07:21
I LOVE YOU!!!!
My Vista issues have been giving me a headache for three whole days. I finally got my OS and files restored but couldn’t access anything.
This worked like a charm! You are the greatest!!
THANK YOU!!!!
December 9th, 2009 12:35
[...] tried a registry key addition from MyDigitalLife which is all very nice but it attaches itself to a right click context menu which only works once [...]
December 7th, 2009 06:01
seems to have worked weel. now my computer is mine, mine, mine. good. why do these daft b*ggers do these things?
November 20th, 2009 11:47
I started with Dos and a 286 and have never
had a better and more useful tip from anyone. Using it solved a problem I’ve worked on for over a week!
TY TY
TY
November 15th, 2009 07:18
Wow thanks, that was a real life saver!!
November 12th, 2009 11:03
Sure after i disabled uac. But in win7 it doesn’t matter that its turned on or off.
November 12th, 2009 11:01
You are a lifesaver!
Even if I did disable UAC, this crap didn’t allow me to my own files. I agree with security, program-execution prevention, but if I, repeat I want to start a program, why cant do it. The main problem was an executable file with another extension. No run as administrator. In special settings I cant grant access to a folder or a file to myself as administrator. So I agree with security, but in the world there are people who dont use their computer just for power on->internet explorer->office->minesweeper->off. Windows8 slogan will be: are you sure? or what. Even when microsoft proudly announced that in windows7 uac is much more user friendly. It must be but in vista i was able to access my files.
November 3rd, 2009 16:15
how do u uninstall this cause it doesnt work for me
November 3rd, 2009 16:10
i hope this works
November 2nd, 2009 13:12
[...] Re: Windows 7 file Copy dl and run this reg file. And the rightclick> full control Take and Grant Full Control Permissions and Ownership in Windows 7 or Vista Right Click Menu My Digi… [...]
October 24th, 2009 05:07
This protect yourself from yourself protection is bull. It wouldn’t allow me to instal a windows certified driver.
I ran grant admin full control on the windows directory and still don’t have permission to update windows.
Any ideas?
October 23rd, 2009 03:26
that is very useful
thank u very much
September 21st, 2009 20:02
sianz:
open the .reg file in Notepad and insert a hyphen in each of the registry values.
i.e. change [HKEY_LOCAL...]
into [-HKEY_LOCAL...]
Save it as delete_GrantAdminFullControl.reg or whatever you’d like and run it if you don’t like the feature. Same with any registry file you want to try out.
You can also just delete a value but leave a key by adding the hyphen after the equals sign in the file.
August 28th, 2009 06:31
This tip turned out to be a lifesaver. The key is quite safe. All it does is to add a right-click context menu, which can be invoked to execute a command prompt to take ownership of the file or folder. Without this I would have been forced to downgrade to Windows XP. I was trying to copy custom files from an old hard drive mounted in a new machine and kept getting “file access denied” errors. The solution actually was to take ownership of the files on the hard drive I was attempting to copy from. (This hard drive will be trashed when copy is complete so there’s no security risk) I suppose if you’re an IT admin you might want to remove the registry key when finished or (in Windows 7) set up a system restore point before executing the regedit but as a home user who just wants control of my own machine I see no reason to not keep it, and I hope Microsoft eventually includes this in Windows 7.
August 23rd, 2009 07:52
@Phred, no, in IT, you learn that registry editing is at your own risk, don’t do it if you have no idea what you are doing.
July 10th, 2009 02:15
In IT we all learn about backup – so that we can return to where we were originally, don’t we?
So where is the instruction to uninstall this registry entry?
June 19th, 2009 21:15
how do i change back to normal the folder i click this on??? help!!