Deleting the Undeletable in Windows Vista

Upgrading from Windows XP or pre-release versions of Vista to the final RTM build of Windows Vista generates some accessibility issues. Both a straight in-place upgrade, running an upgrade via Vista's setup, and a Windows Easy Transfer that keeps the settings, programs and data from the old operating system to the new Vista environment, result in some folders being completely inaccessible.

Tim Sneath, a Windows Vista Technical Evangelist revealed that even when running Vista with administrator privileges, the folders cannot be accessed. This is the case due to the access control list (ACL) privilege separation settings with Security Identifier (SID) assigned by a Windows Domain controller that is not portable. Switching partitions when upgrading to Vista RTM tends to generate inaccessibility issues.

Sneath delivers a solution: the secret lies in two command-line utilities, one ancient, the other completely revised for this release. Respectively, these are takeown (which takes ownership of a file or directory) and icacls (which sets new ACLs on that directory). I created a small batch command on my system called itsmine.cmd, as follows:

takeown /f %1 /r /d y
icacls %1 /grant administrators:F /t

You will need to run such a command from an elevated command prompt.