Ntfs "No permissions have been assigned for this object"

Question

We occasionally observe damaged permissions on folders with the error: No permissions have been assigned for this object

The affected systems are mostly Windows 7 but also Terminal Server 2008 and later, not affected is Server 2003 Terminal Server.

Problems
Problems come up when a sub folder is created. Because the sub folder does not inherit any permissions, it gets only the default permissions (owner etc.)

Already done
We compard the affected systems but they have no significant matches in installed software or drivers.

Currently we look for a method how to detect those faults before our software runs on an error. Tools like AccessEnum doesn't reveal it. Chksk doesn't find any errors.

But our most important is the question what is the cause of this?

Does anybody have experience with that?

Edit:
Mostly the local temp folder (C:\Users\[user]\AppData\Local\Temp) itself is affected by the error. At least our sofware gets the errors there. But I know, that other folders can also be affected.

We saw the error on about 40 customer systems and, once fixed, it seems not to come back again.

The fix is quite easy. Add system - full control (or something else) to the permissions and the old permissions reappear again.

Edit2

How dows the problem look like exactly:

• The permissions on the temp folder are corrupted (as shown in screenshot)
• In this state everybody can do anything in the folder (delete, create etc.)
• Our installer runs elevated and creates a subfolder .\temp\ProgramInfos. That works (see above).
• Because the temp folder hase no active permissions, the ProgramInfos folder does'nt inherit anything. So ProgramInfos gets only the rights for Administrators, System
• The installed application later is running not elevated
• The not elevated user can't access the folder - in not elevated state he isn't administrator.

It's not a general error. We are installed on ten thousands of computers and till today only about 40 had that error.

(In lack of an english system with that error the screnshot does not show an authentic message but in german it's the same)

Answer 1

That Temp folder is about as close to a free-for-all as you're going to get on Windows. By default the "Users" group of the PC have full control of it, so you can't trust it to be in any expected state.

The only answer is to alter your installer to ensure it's applying the permissions it needs to the folders it's creating, instead of depending on (possibly missing/incorrect) inherited permissions.