not really programming and probably butchered the execution on that cmd but this felt like the only place it would be funny to post it
this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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I feel like that would break a lot of stuff
It doesn't break anything to add privileges. It's only a security risk.
The way I do it is I have a script that adds an entry in file explorer called "Take Ownership". I don't have to use it often but when I do it's a life saver, and it doesn't blanket take ownership of the whole disk.
Obviously an elevated super user like linux has would be much more secure, but it's windows, they're not interested in security if it isn't about their share price.
in retrospect that's actually a way better method. do you use the one from winearo? they strike me as untrustworthy but that is 100% based on vibes.
Oof, yeah, those vibes are rancid. The website is covered in shady looking links and they want you to download an exe, which you don't need for a simple registry edit which can be done with a text file.
This link shows you how to make the .reg file: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-using-right-click-context-menu-windows-10
For my money that's way easier than doing it manually through the registry editor yourself, and you can inspect the code to see what it's doing.
If you want to see the manual steps to take ownership without the registry entry, it looks like this: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-and-folders-windows-10
If that isn't a dark pattern then I don't know what is. They do not want you to have control over your machine, at all.
Preventing users from breaking their machines unless they really work to bypass the defaults is a good thing. It's the same path all major Linux distros have followed by doing things like disabling the root account at install. The entire ethos of distros like NixOS is to not be able change your own OS unless you actively go out of your way.
The important part is that you can change it.
NTFS access control entries are more secure than traditional Unix owners. It's why Linux copied NTFS style ACE file permissions years ago.
they say it does. the consequences have yet to reveal themselves to me
Windows permissions are more flexible than basic Unix ones. A file doesn't just have an owner and a group, it can have individual permissions for arbitrarily many entities, so taking ownership doesn't remove any of the permissions from anything that already had access, it just adds more. The command shown here is closest in effect to deciding you're always going to log in as root from now on, although Windows has a way to effectively do that without modifying the ACL of every file. Either way, it's silly, and usually people who suggest it are under the impression that XP did permissions right by not meaningfully enforcing them and not having an equivalent of a root account you can temporarily switch to, and Vista only changed things specifically to annoy people, and not to be more like Unix.