Windows 10: Open "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender" by taking ownership

Hello,I am facing somewhat bizarre problem when opening "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender" folder.It does not let me change the Owner as seen in point number 5 - greyed out. I will show you step by step with screenshots what I am clicking on and what opens up for your reference.1. When I try to open the folder, it shows me this popup stating I do not have permission to access this folder:2. Normally with other folders I can just click on Continue and it would work. But for this, it tells me to use security tab see screenshot below:3. When I click on Security Tab, this window opens

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Error: "You require permission from SYSTEM to make changes" while deleteing files and folders in Windows 10

Please try the takeown.exe and icacls.exe command-line method to assign permissions.

Run:

• takeown /f "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\scans\History\Service\DetectionHistory" /a /r /d y
  

• icacls "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\scans\History\Service\DetectionHistory" /grant %username%:F /T
  

• rd /s /q "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\scans\History\Service\DetectionHistory"
  

 

Deleting the final directories of an image in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\ impossible & phantom files

I created an image file in an attempt to use the Desktop Bridge, unfortunately an impossible piece of software. It seems the creation of an image file failed, so I decided to rename the directory to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\!Images and try again.
After that it was impossible to delete anything in !Images until I applied a registry setting which allowed me to Take ownership via Explorer. This was not an easy task either. It was not enough to take ownership on C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\!Images
directly, but I had to repeat it multiple times further down the tree and finally succeeded in deleting most of the content.

Now comes the weird part. I have only left a few folder up to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\!Images\BaseImage-14393\Files. This directory is empty but I can still not delete it (the usual you need Administrative rights, try again etc. etc.; recycling
6 files it says). When I click once again Take ownership, it starts taking ownership of 1000's of files - which are not there. The messages are are either
The system can not find the file specified or Success - the folder .. .(somewhere in Documents and settings most of the times) .. are now owned by user (my computername).

I can repeat that over and over but I can not delete the !Images and the remaining C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\!Images\BaseImage-14393\Files directory. They really seem empty (both from Explorer and from a DOS prompt). Then how can Take ownership see
1000's of files and (think) it's giving me ownership to many of them? And how can I finally get rid of these directories?

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Take Ownership

Hello,

Thank you for posting your concern here in Microsoft Community and welcome to the Windows 10 Family.

From the description of the issue, I understand that you are unable to take full ownership of the files and folders.

I would recommend you to see if you are logged in administrator account, if not then enable it. Please follow the below steps.

I would suggest you to enable the built in administrator account.

You need to run the command from an elevated command prompt. To do that you need to do the following:

• Press the Windows key t+ R from the keyboard to open the Run Command Dialog Box
• Enter cmd and right-click on the Command Prompt result that should appear.
  
• This opens a list of options at the bottom. Select Run as administrator there.
  
• Accept the UAC prompt
• Enter the following command to enable the hidden administrator account:
  net user administrator /active:yes

Hope the above information was helpful. If you need further assistance, please do let us know and we would be happy to help you further.

Thank You.