Take Ownership and Grant ‘Full Control’ Recursively

Take Ownership KB ID 0001200 

Problem

I had a bunch of old user profile folders I needed to delete today, When setup properly even the domain administrator can’t get in there and delete them;

You need permission to perform this action.

You don’t currently have persmission to access this folder

If it’s just one folder then simply take ownership, grant yourself rights and delete it! But I had a lot of folders so I needed a more robust (read less work) solution.

Solution: Take Ownership

Take Ownership of all Folders/Sub-Folders, and Files

Open an administrative command window, and execute the following command;

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takeown /a /r /d Y /f C:\"Path-To-Folder"

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Grant ‘Full Control’ Rights to all Folders/Sub-Folders, and Files

Just because you are the owner, that does not mean you have any rights to the folders and files, to grant full control to the administrators group.

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icacls C:\"Path-To-Folder" /grant administrators:F /t

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You can then delete the folder and its contents recursively with the following command.

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Remove-Item -Path "Path-To-Folder" -Force -Recurse

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Related Articles, References, Credits, or External Links

Can’t Delete a File or Folder or Take Ownership