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YatesGriffin's avatar
YatesGriffin
Iron Contributor
May 19, 2025

Recovering from a system-wide icacls reset

Hey guys. So I was trying to fix permissions on a drive for a buddy of mine by running icacls commands on it while it's in an external enclosure. I entered icacls * /reset /T while in a Powershell prompt for the E: drive...and that's when I found out that icacls doesn't respect where you are currently navigated to in the command line.

So in short, I just ****ed my whole computer. Both user profiles I sign into (one personal and one for work) now redirect to temporary profiles. Is there any way to recover from this or am I gonna have to bite the bullet and just reformat? It's not hugely problematic because all my personal files are on a NAS but it's still going to be a LOT of work.

- - - Updated - - -

So I appear to have fixed it by changing permissions on both user folders. On the root folder for each user I selected Properties > Security > Advanced, then I added the correct user with full permissions (left the owner as the "Administrators" group), disabled inheritance, then replaced all child object permissions. I also removed "Everyone" from read + execute.

Everything seems to be functioning properly but I may run into problems going forward, we'll see. There were a couple "access denied" files in the user folders, I assume they were some kind of weird dynamic caching files or whatever.

2 Replies

  • AnselRhodes's avatar
    AnselRhodes
    Iron Contributor

    While reformatting is a last resort, it's not necessary if your system is stable after fixing permissions. Keep regular backups and be cautious with broad icacls commands in the future.

  • KaiSullivan's avatar
    KaiSullivan
    Iron Contributor

    The command reset permissions recursively on the drive, likely removing or misconfiguring permissions for system and user files. Since Windows relies heavily on specific permissions, this can cause profiles to break or load as temporary.