Permissions & acl's nightmare

[Th30m]

Over the years, Iv swapped PCs, and used most OS's, including some Server.. consequently, as I have just found out, a lot of data I keep (photos, software, music, docs.. the usual!), have now all got messed up permissions.

This came to my attention when using a renamer app to batch rename 1000s of my pics, and it failed on lots, and after investigation, I believe this to be a permissions issue.  Some of the files were even owned by unknown accounts!  Before I did anything drastic, knowing that messing about with acl's and permissions could cause damage, I copied a dozen or so to a Test folder.  Need less to say, Ive managed to now lose complete access to that folder (thankfully only a copy!), but is it possible to regain access, when there is no owner, or any acl that permits anyone access?

Id really like to clean up this disk's permissions, remove unwanted, but obviously allow only what is actually needed.  Im assuming the easiest thing to do would be simply access the security tab on the root of the folder, add/remove what I need, then replace all child permission, to match the parent. 

What are the basic permissions/acl's that I should have so I dont have any access issues?

I did notice when reading through some articles, it was mentioned to set Everyone to Full Control... what is the reason for this?  I would imagine that you would only want the likes of System, Administrators and Owner to have full Control?

Thanks in advance!

[Boggin]

Adding Everyone with Full Control can be a workaround, but have you ran the Windows Repair program that deals with Permissions.

It's advised to run it twice. www.tweaking.com

[Th30m]

Giving Full Control to Everyone sort of negates the point of having security and permissions...whilst it can be a quck fix, id rather have things as they should be.

Running the repair tool only adds permissions back in, and doesnt clean or remove any, which is what Im after...  I just need to understand which ones actually need to be there so I dont lose access to anything, as I did with the test folder...

Cheers

[Shane]

File permissions are stored in the file system, so the first thing to do is a chkdsk on the drive just so it can repair any security descriptors that might be messed up.

It is possible for the permissions to get really screwed. The unknown accounts are sids of user accounts that use to be on the machine or are from another system, you can normally get rid of these orphan permissions with no problem.

The first thing to do is to take ownership of everything you need first, and then give yourself full permissions. THEN go change the permissions to what you want. The reason for this is you have to have permission to change permissions lol

Shane