I was running Vista with two NTFS partitions (C: and D:), then formatted C: partition and installed Windows 7. The second partition (D:) had some files security set on files and folders.
After Windows 7 was installed, some files on drive D: were not accessible anymore and I was getting “Access Denied”. I tried to right-click/properties on the folders that were not accessible and changed their owner and changed permissions but still some folders were still inaccessible not matter what I did.
After some research, it turned out the tool “cacls” that allows one to display or change ACLs (access control lists) can help to reset ACLs. In Windows 7 it is called “icalcs”.
To reset files permissions, follow these easy 3 steps:
Step 1: Run “cmd” as Administrator.
Note: In MS Windows 8 and above, press the Win+X keys, then choose “Command Prompt (Admin)”.
Step 2: Go to the drive or folder in question, for example:
CD /D D:
Step 3: To reset all the files permissions, type:
icacls * /T /Q /C /RESET
That’s it! After that, the files permissions were reset and I could access them back again.
Very Important note:
Step 3 is irreversible. Make sure you backup the permissions before you proceed!
It is possible that “icacls” might fail. For that try to take ownership of the files first. Just before Step (3), please type the following command:
takeown /R /F *
Source (sumber) : http://lallouslab.net/2009/06/14/resetting-ntfs-files-security-and-permission-in-windows-7/
