Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I take ownership of a file or folder using a script?

— RV

Hey, RV. Interesting question. In the past, the Scripting Guys have tried to take ownership of a Porsche 911, beachfront property in Hawaii, and the New York Yankees; all of those efforts failed. Considering our track record, we weren’t sure what would happen if we tried to take ownership of a file or folder. (Although as long as we weren’t issued yet another restraining order we figured it couldn’t be too bad.)

As it turns out, taking ownership of a file or folder is child’s play. (Assuming, of course, that the child in question has been granted the NTFS permission enabling him or her to take ownership of the file or folder.) The following script might not be as good as a beachfront property in Hawaii, but it’s awfully close:

strComputer = “.”

Set objWMIService = GetObject(“winmgmts:\\” & strComputer & “\root\cimv2”)
Set colFolders = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    (“Select * From Win32_Directory Where Name = ‘C:\\Scripts'”)
For Each objFolder in colFolders
    objFolder.TakeOwnershipEx
Next

If you’re thinking, “Man, this looks like a run-of-the-mill WMI script,” well, you’re right: it is a run-of-the-mill WMI script. We start off by connecting to the WMI service on the local computer (although we could just as easily run this script against a remote computer). We then use this line to retrieve a collection of folders; in this case, all the folders that have the name C:\Scripts:

Set colFolders = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    (“Select * From Win32_Directory Where Name = ‘C:\\Scripts'”)

Two things to note here. First, because we want to take ownership of a folder we use the Win32_Directory class. What if we wanted to take ownership of a file? Well, then we’d need to use the CIM_DataFile class. Here’s an example of a query that would bind us to the file C:\Scripts\Test.vbs:

Set colFolders = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
    (“Select * From CIM_DataFile Where Name = ‘C:\\Scripts\\Test.vbs'”)

Second, note that we have to double-up any \ characters in our path; thus C:\Scripts becomes C:\\Scripts. That’s because the \ is a reserved character in WMI; because of that, any time we need to use a \ in a WQL query we have to “escape” that character. In this case, “escape” is just a fancy way of saying use two \’s instead of one. (Or, in the case of a UNC path, four \’s instead of two; thus \\atl-fs-01\public becomes \\\\atl-fs-01\\public.)

As you know, calling the ExecQuery method gives us a collection of folders (although this particular collection contains only a single folder, C:\Scripts). To take ownership of each item in the collection we set up a For Each loop and then, for each of those items, call the TakeOwnershipEx method:

For Each objFolder in colFolders
    objFolder.TakeOwnershipEx
Next

The TakeOwnershipEx method enables us to take ownership not only of the folder C:\Scripts but also any subfolders found in C:\Scripts. If you don’t want to take ownership of the subfolders then use the TakeOwnership method instead. In that case your For Each loop would look like this:

For Each objFolder in colFolders
    objFolder.TakeOwnership
Next

So there you go, RV. The next time some guy whizzes past you in a Porsche remember this: he might have the fancy sports car, but you have a script that enables you to take ownership of a file or folder. If that doesn’t wipe the smile off the face of Mr. Porsche Driver we don’t know what will.