How to Use the TakeOwn Utility to Manage Shares in Windows NT 4.0

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This article was previously published under Q269269

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SUMMARY

This article describes the how to use the TakeOwn utility that is included in the Microsoft Windows 2000 Resource Kit to manage shares in Windows NT 4.0.

MORE INFORMATION

The TakeOwn utility is a command-line utility that you can use to clean up multiple boot drives without formatting the drive. You can use TakeOwn in the following ways:

To enable administrators to take ownership of shares in cases where the administrator account has been explicitly denied access. After administrators take ownership of the shares or drives, they can run the Cacls utility (Cacls.exe).
To correct or repair permissions that have been misconfigured or tampered with.

You can also use the TakeOwn utility that comes with Windows 2000 Resource Kit with Windows NT 4.0 to give permissions to administrators to access shares. This utility runs only on NTFS file system (NTFS) partitions.

To start TakeOwn, run the following command:

takeown drive letter:\share\*.*

When you run the command, the administrator takes ownership of the drive. Then, when you run the following command, the administrator is given Full Control permissions to the user's home folders:

cacls drive letter\users\*.* /e /g administrator:f

To confirm these changes, start Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the folder, and then verify that the administrator has ownership of the folder, and has been given Full Control permissions.