Windows Seven

Windows 7 – How to Delete Files Protected by TrustedInstaller
November 12th, 2009 by Aseem | File in: Windows 7

Did you know that a lot of files in Windows 7 are not owned by you, even if you arethe Administrator? They are instead owned by an entity called the “Trusted Installer”. Such a wonderful sounding name eh!
So that’s not a problem most of the time, unless you need to delete certainsystem files and folders. You’ll end up getting a message like:
You do not have permission to perform this action.
or something like:
You need authorization from TrustedInstaller in order toperform this action.
Thanks Windows! So in order to delete a file that is owned by TrustedInstaller, you have to first take ownership of the files or folders and then grant yourself full controlpermissions and rights!
You have to do all of that just to be able to rename, delete, or edit these files and folders. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps in order to do this.
First, go to thefolder or set of files that you need to change permissions for, right-click on them and choose Properties.

Next click on the Security tab and then click on the Advanced button at the bottom:

Nextclick on the Owner tab and you’ll now see that the current owner is TrustedInstaller.

Now click on the Edit button and choose who you would like to change the owner to, either your account or theAdministrators. If your account is an Administrator account, I would suggest just picking Administrators.

You can also check off Replace owner on subcontainers and objects if you need to delete morethan one file in a folder. Go ahead and click OK. Now you will see that the Current owner is the account you picked.

Click OK until you have closed all properties windows and are back to theWindows Explorer screen. Then right-click on the folder or file again and choose Properties again.
Now click on the Security tab again, but instead of clicking on Advanced, you need to click the Edit...