So I Kinda Screwed My Win 7 Install...

...not too badly, but a little.

I installed a custom, Steam-styled dark theme, and for that I had to change the permissions from trustedinstaller to admin (or my own username, I forget). And it looks like I overdid it a little.

So now some updates won't install, and some games neither. I went and gave all of windows/system, system32 and wow64 back to TrustedInstaller, and it helped some, but I still get the aforementioned errors.

Any ideas what should and shouldn't be given to TrustedInstaller? Am I screwed?

Thanks

 

If you are going to mess about in this way you had better get into the habit of imaging your system from time to time. Restoring an image, depending on its size, can be as litlle as ten minutes and apart from a reinstall is the only surefire defence against problems of this nature, but in the meantime see if THIS helps.

 

Thank you for your help.

It is resetting permissions but in many cases, such as C:\Windows, it says "access denied"... :-(

 

Download Windows Repair Portable and extract the folder to somewhere convenient.
Reboot the computer and boot into safe mode.
Open the Windows Repair folder and run Repair_Windows.exe
Go to the Repairs - Main tab and select Preset:permissions Only. At the next screen, press Start Repairs and hold your breath until the repair is finished.
Reboot the computer and see if everything is now working.

 

Thanks guys, I gave up, Win 7 is end of life anyway, I'll make do with my Win10 partition. Sigh. I *HATE* windows 10, and I loved 7. Bye, beloved OS...