Strange Win7 permissions problem

[nomar]

Win7 Home Premium, Core i7, 6GB ram, 64bit

I'm stumped... something has happened on 2 systems that prevents my admin user account from being able to install updates.

First I noticed that while installing new software that there were permissions problems while trying to write to the start menu. I had to browse to the start menu folder and apply permissions for my user account to allow this.

Now, my MS Security Essentials is out of date and I won't update. I'm positive that this is the reason why and I'd like to figure out: 1) what folder I need to change permissions on and 2) why this is happening?

This also happened on my Win7 server and my only solution was to add a new admin user and delete the other user. Doing this fixed it all. However, I really don't want to change users on my workstation because of all the files and folders I have.

In trying to gain permission to files on a failing hard drive, I installed something called "take ownership" which worked. I wonder if this is the cause of the problems. However, I did not use "take ownership" on my server, and I have uninstalled it and removed the registry values and it obviously has not fixed my problem.

The Security Essentials update fails; it goes through the download process, starts the "installing" process but halts at the end and simply says "The virus and spyware definitions didn't update because of an internet or network connectivity problem".

I don't have any spyware or viruses on the computer.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

 

[Danith]

Thats weird, permissions should just be changing without any input. I would scan for virus's and such. That said, I found this from a search

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222
Tis article is for windows vista but i works also for windows 7.

Just run in a evalated prompt the following command.
secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose

Kind Regards
DFT

The article does mention the below though

Because there is no supported process to replay the permissions made by the operating system setup, the use of the “secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\inf\defltbase.inf /db defltbase.sdb /verbose” command line is no longer capable of resetting all security defaults and may even result in the operating system becoming unstable.

So I would have backups just in case.

In case it helps, here are the permissions for my windows folder -

Owner - TrustedInstaller (permissions 'special', everything checked and greyed out so I can't change it), This folder and subfolders
SYSTEM, apply to This folder only, everything except Full Control, Delete subfolder and files, Change permissions, Take ownership checked
SYSTEM, Subfolders and files only, all permissions checked
[My admin user], This folder only, same permissions as the first SYSTEM
[My admin user], Subfolders and files only, same permissions as the 2nd SYSTEM
Users, this folder, subfolders and files, Traverse folder/execute file, List folder/read data, Read attributes, Read extended attributes, Read permissions
CREATOR OWNER, subfolders and files only, everything checked

 

[nomar]

Thanks for the reply. It is strange that the same thing happened on 2 of my computers (1 desktop and the other my home server) so I'm guessing it has something to do with software or a combination of software I installed.

It was first noticed on my server when I couldn't install/upgrade iTunes. Completely deleting it didn't work either. Only when I added a new admin user and switched over to that account could I do it.

Same thing happened on my desktop... I wonder if it has to do with iTunes. I couldn't even delete iTunes because the permissions problem didn't let the installer delete from specific locations.

 

[Nenu]

Have you used any system cleaning software?

 

[nomar]

I did use Auslogics Registry Cleaner - but that was after I had these issues. I ended up having to manually remove iTunes and then used the Reg Cleaner afterwords.