Give Ownership Back to TrustedInstaller

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Are you getting "Unable to save permission changes on file_name. Access is denied." error messages when trying to modify a file or change permissions on a file that has TrustedInstaller as its owner? It is possible to take ownership away from TrustedInstaller, and give it to your Administrative account, but it is not wise to mess with System Files. TrustedInstaller is a special service that manages “essential” resources (system files, folders, and registry keys) that are critical to the operation of Windows Vista. To prevent application and operating system failure, these resources are protected using Windows File Protection (WFP) in such a way that applications or users cannot modify these resources. The way this protection is implemented is by setting an ACL on these resources only to allow only the TrustedInstaller user to modify them. When setup applications try to modify a protected system resource it will not get an error as mentioned above, however Vista will detect the installation program, and the request will be accepted and a success code will be returned, but the resource will not be modified. This is why you may have the need to take permission of a system resource, so you can modify it manually.

If you gave ownership of a system resource to yourself, so you could modify the resource, and now you want to give ownership back to TrustedInstaller, simply follow these steps:

Right-click on the file and choose Properties
Click Security tab
Click Advanced button
Click Owner tab
Click Edit button
Click Other User or Group and type in:

NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller

Press Ok on all dialogs until all property dialogs are closed

For instructions on how-to take ownership from TrustedInstaller, and give ownership to yourself to modify a file click here.