Does Changing C: Ownership to SYSTEM Ruin Everything?

[abrogard]

I could not write a batch file to C: so I went about trying to find out why and how to fix.

Finished up following a forum post that had me changing ownership of the whole C: drive to SYSTEM.

After a while I aborted it. Thinking maybe it wasn't a good idea.

Now I've seen a couple of weird behaviours. Both to do with inputting passwords. They system has claimed they contained characters they didn't contain. Would not accept them and there was no way I could make it happen. The progs were not seeing what I was writing.

An effect of my ownership changes?

Bunch of questions now:

1. Would it have ruined everything?
2. If so what can I do to fix it?
3. How could I have fixed it so's I could write that batch file?
4. If I partition this drive and install another win10 on the new empty partition will that work okay? I'll then be able to boot from it and take my time cleaning up the old partition?

And I see I have a 450MB 'recovery' partition. Is this any help to me?

 

[Colif]

1. I think there are meant to be several users that are meant to have access to c, one of them being yourself, but a few other windows users would need it as well. like trustedinstaller.

it seems it saved some settings before you aborted it. Windows really shouldn't let people change some permissions as it can break windows.

2. i don't think you can fix it now. The only way to fix it is a fresh install of win 10
you can use this to copy anything off drive you want to save: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/use-ubuntu-live-cd-to-backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/
3. see 2.
4. I would just fresh install win 10 after using ubuntu to copy anything you can't afford to lose. Much cleaner as then you won't have multiple extra partitions on drive

Windows Setup will automatically create the 4 partitions below on the drive, and install Windows 10 on the primary partition.
Partition 1 - Recovery
Partition 2 - System - The EFI System partition that contains the NTLDR, HAL, Boot.txt, and other files that are needed to boot the system, such as drivers.
Partition 3 - MSR - The Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition that reserves space on each disk drive for subsequent use by operating system software.
Partition 4 - Primary - Where Windows is to be installed to.

handy guide to clean install: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html

Recovery only helpful if you did a reset but I am not convinced that is enough to fix the permissions problem.

What forum gave you this advice??

 

[SkyNetRising]

Bunch of questions now:
1. Would it have ruined everything?
2. If so what can I do to fix it?
3. How could I have fixed it so's I could write that batch file?
4. If I partition this drive and install another win10 on the new empty partition will that work okay? I'll then be able to boot from it and take my time cleaning up the old partition?

1. yes, most likely;
2. full reinstall;
3. Add create file permission for your user;
4. Probably (if you do everything right)

 

[USAFRet]

Finished up following a forum post that had me changing ownership of the whole C: drive to SYSTEM.

A forum post in here, or elsewhere?
If in here, could you post the link?

1. Probably
2. Clean install
3. Depends exactly where, and what that batch file is supposed to do
4. Maybe. You will almost certainly end up with a false dualboot scenario. At startup, you will be presented with a choice of which OS to run. And only one of them works.