Windows – Take ownership of files or folders

This POS problem has happened to me on several occasions [attaching my Win 7 C: drive to my new Win 8 laptop; attaching a Windows 2008 drive (on VMware) to another server] and seems that there’s no way to fix it from the GUI.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows8_1-security/access-denied-error-applying-security-info/e8d77b3f-3e46-489b-bb55-80a7423a45e2

a.     In the start menu search Command Prompt or “CMD”.

b.     From the results, right click Command Prompt and Click Run as Administrator.

c.    At the command prompt, type “takeown /f <foldername> /r /d y” without quotes and then press ENTER. (Replace <foldername> with the path of the folder).

d.    Then, type “icacls <foldername> /grant administrators:F /T” without quotes and hit enter. (Replace <foldername> with the path of the folder).