Windows 7 Can anybody advise me on what to do

[jaygon]

I have made some changes to Trusted Installer last night on my windows 7 laptop and I'm nervous that I may have messed it up. I followed this article instructions.

Windows 7 – How to Delete Files Protected by TrustedInstaller

I did this because I just switched to Windows 7 and my Itunes kept giving me an error message saying that 'I did not have permission to perform this action'. I was simply trying to delete some songs from Itunes. I googled the problem and found lots of articles similar to the above.

Is it dangerous not to have Trusted Installer as the default owner in System32? Removing it certainly stopped me getting the Itunes error messages which were getting so annoying. Since I followed the above instructions, all now ‘seems’ to work fine but will potentially dangerous or nuicance programs now have access to my computer without any warning?
I changed ownership from Trusted Installer to myself, as main/only PC user. I also had the option of changing the role to the ‘administrator’ (myself also) but I just chose my ordinary username over admin. Would this make a difference?
Because I didn’t ‘Replace myself as owner on subcontainers and objects’ I got an ‘initial’ second message saying something like ‘there are more than one user commands and system may become unstable.
Is this an issue? Should I have changed subcontainers and object ownership it as per the advice in the above instructions? Should I have done nothing? Itunes now works perfectly and I am getting no more error messages since last night. Just worried about that initial message I got (on declining the change of subcontainers and object ownership) warning me that there was more than one command.
Can someone please answer this asap? I’m worried that the whole thing may crash. I have been warned on another Windows forum that I have made a huge error.

Can you advise,
Regards,
Jay

 

[jaygon]

Having read all over the place that I really should not have touched the systems32 file, I have just done a system restore to take me back to yesterday morning. I checked the properties and ownership of systems32 once again and now it seems that Trusted Installer is once again the owner of this folder.
I hope I've done the right thing and that all is in order. The only glitch I seem to have is that my hotmail account is not loading properly. I'm not sure if this is a server problem or as result of my tinkerings. I should have left well alone.

 

[kemical]

It sounds like you got away with it.. As for the Hotmail account, do you mean you cannot sign or something else?

 

[jaygon]

What would have happened had I not completed a system restore? Judging by the threads online, many many people seem to have taken this personal ownership of systems32 (seems to be for the purposes of deleting unwanted files) Would it not have had disasterous effects for everyone who changed the settings? I HOPE I got away with it but I suppose there is no sure way to tell. I did check ownership of the folder after the restore and it definitely says Trusted Installer is in charge again. I have also re-downloaded a program that I lost in the restore and several updates and they seem to work. As for Hotmail (and the Microsoft answers site where I put another message) it is extremely slow to load the main page and then once logged in, the page does not download properly and I cannot access the inbox. It looks like the page cannot download in full.

Can I check one other thing? I transferred an old help file onto my new Laptop and Windows 7 cannot read it. I followed the instructions and downloaded the exe.32 file and ran it. Then I had to click into properties of the file an 'unblock' it (not mentioned in the online instructions I read) I know that the file is safe but will it affect any of my settings, 'unblocking' this windows help file?

Thanks again. I will leave the windows folders alone from here on in! Ps. Anyone else having the hotmail problem?

 

[kemical]

Well if you hadn't completed the restore probably nothing would have happened as all you had changed was the ownership of the file but still... One does have to be careful when dealing with stuff like this..

For the slow loading webpages, try pressing Ctrl+F5 when your on the actual page or use something like this app here:

Link Removed

If the file your trying to open is just a help file then you should be fine..

 

[kurteb]

you can download Windows6.1-KB917607-x86 for 32-bit systems if you want to look at xp help files with windows 7

 

[Mike]

What would have happened had I not completed a system restore? Judging by the threads online, many many people seem to have taken this personal ownership of systems32 (seems to be for the purposes of deleting unwanted files) Would it not have had disasterous effects for everyone who changed the settings?

It is a security measure. Your account doesn't have ownership of System32 in the event it is compromised. Malware would, in theory, have difficulty altering files in protected Windows folders. It is there to maintain the integrity of the operating system. Under best practice, you should not edit the default ownership settings. Windows Resource Protection also runs what is called Windows Side-by-Side on your system files. Should these files become damaged, altered, or corrupted in some way, there is still a datastore of these files and their SHA1 data, that Windows can look to, in order to restore system integrity. The consistency of system file integrity is manually checked using System File Integrity checker (sfc /scannow) from the Windows Command Processor (cmd.exe). By giving Administrator ownership over System32, you essentially bypassed an important security setup on the system. Any process on your account could theoretically just write to that folder without your knowledge or permission. It was a good move to go back.