takeown and icacls commands

I hope this is the right forum to post this ; if not please re-direct me and sorry for the trouble.
I have some trouble taking ownership of system files on Vista SP2
For example
>takeown /f c:\Users\Meself\Documents\phile.pdf

works well after the command prompt


>icacls c:\Users\Meself\Documents\phile.pdf
gives an error message invalid parameter

Any help gratefully appreciated

Thanks
Mike

 

There appear to be different versions of icacls with different syntax. I've heard of some strange troubles, such as spaces in the path, even inside quotes, apparently causing errors.

Have you tried

Code:

c:
cd \Users\Meself\Documents
icacls phile.pdf

That seems to work best on Vista.

As for the right forum, batch programmers may know about this command, so asking here is good IMO, but people in Software may be able to help, too.

 

Are you running the this in an elevated command prompt?

 

Dear Theefool
I am not sure what an elevated command prompt is.
I used
Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator

But my vista pc which used to ask me to enable UAC (user acct ctrl) doesn't do so any more, runs new programs without asking, even though UAC is enabled
What do you think?
Thanks so much
Mike

 

Thanks very much as icacls is working or gives a success message for the 1st time. However I still dont own the file which does not allow making a copy to my Desktop and also resists deletion after which happened as below
cd \Users\MichaelSmith1983-PC\

takeown /f ntuser.dat.LOG1 [Enter]

SUCCESS the file <or folder> C:\Users\Meself\ntuser.dat.LOG1 is now owned by user "MichaelSmith1983-PC\MichaelSmith1983"

icacls ntuser.dat.LOG1 [Enter]
ntuser.dat.LOG1 MichaelSmith1983-PC\MichaelSmith1983:<I><F>
NT \AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:<I><F>
Successfully processed 1 files, Failed processing 0 files
.....
when I right click+copy, I get
"The action can't be completed because the file is open in another program. Close the file and try again"
What s wrong? Thanks very much, Mike

 

.............................................................................

Thanks very much as icacls is working or gives a success message for the 1st time. However I still dont own the file which does not allow making a copy to my Desktop and also resists deletion after which happened as below
cd \Users\MichaelSmith1983-PC\

takeown /f ntuser.dat.LOG1 [Enter]

SUCCESS the file <or folder> C:\Users\Meself\ntuser.dat.LOG1 is now owned by user "MichaelSmith1983-PC\MichaelSmith1983"

icacls ntuser.dat.LOG1 [Enter]
ntuser.dat.LOG1 MichaelSmith1983-PC\MichaelSmith1983:<I><F>
NT \AUTHORITY\SYSTEM:<I><F>
Successfully processed 1 files, Failed processing 0 files
.....
when I right click+copy, I get
"The action can't be completed because the file is open in another program. Close the file and try again"
What s wrong? Thanks very much, Mike
Edit/Delete Message

 

..............................................

 

If the file is open, (currently being handled by some code,) many file operations will be blocked, even if you have permission to handle the file yourself. This is to avoid data corruption if two pieces of code are trying to do conflicting operations on the same file. If that file is in the folder of the administrator account you are using, or the account you are logged in, you may be able to log in as a different administrator account to copy the file. (Some code that runs when you use that account may be opening the file.)

 

When you stated running as administrator, that is running it an elevated state.

For icacls, you could try safe mode.