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I was playing around with permissions and In regedit I blocked C drive access. then I blocked the permission for C drive. and now I can't undo anything and change it back even tho I am the Administrator:

Windows Security: Can't open access control editor. Access is denied.

I can't open Regedit anymore because I get this error:

Network Error: Windows cannot access C:\WINDOWS\regedit.exe. Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network. To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.

What do I do? Is there any software that can force my access into it? Please tell me I am really stuck.

Also I can't install "InstallTakeOwnership.reg" either because I don't have access to regedit.

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    "What do I do?" - Reinstall Windows. You can't solve your problem with the ability to take ownership of a registry key. Third-party software does not exist to modify the registry., Without better understanding exactly what you did, reinstaling Windows, is likely your only option.
    – Ramhound
    Sep 16, 2022 at 6:34
  • Does this answer your question? Reset NTFS permissions to factory default on entire system partition?
    – music2myear
    Sep 17, 2022 at 3:45
  • Variations of this question have been asked several times over the years here. Found one that has the basic gist of the right answer.
    – music2myear
    Sep 17, 2022 at 3:46
  • Is there another account on the machine with admin access
    – MyDaftQuestions
    Sep 17, 2022 at 5:14

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You cannot repair or reset permissions. Windows throws up enough warnings before you do something really bad to it, and then it lets you do it.

There is no database of all permissions because Windows assumes if you're messing with permissions you know what you're doing and have a reason for doing it, and because the many details of any given system, the software installed on it, the tasks the user of that system do, all these result in unique sets of permissions.

The only way to resolve this is to reinstall Windows, and a repair install is probably not going to be sufficient.

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From: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/497224/unable-to-display-current-owner

Here is the command sequence that I have used in the past to gain access to a folder where the permissions were locked down.

It will reset ownership to the Administrator group and set the permissions on the "Bad" folder and all subfolders and files to whatever permissions you have set on the parent "Test" folder.

You can save it as a .bat file or just paste the commands into an admin cmd prompt window.

set badfolder="C:\Test\Bad"
takeown /d Y /a /r /f %badfolder%
icacls %badfolder% /reset /t 
icacls %badfolder% /verify /t

Make sure to run in administrator cmd

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