Here’s a quick way to add “Take Ownership” Context Menu Option to all files, folders and drives in Explorer. This registry tweak works in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista.
Steps:
- Download this zip file.
- Open the downloaded zip file and extract its contents to your desktop. You will find two .reg files: ‘Add_Take_Ownership.reg’ and ‘Remove_Take_Ownership.reg’.
- To Add “Take Ownership” Context Menu option, double-click on ‘Add_Take_Ownership.reg’ file, and click on Yes, Yes, and OK when prompted.
You may now delete the files if you don’t wish to remove this new menu option. To remove it, read on.
- Similarly, to remove “Take Ownership” from the context menu, double-click on ‘Remove_Take_Ownership.reg’ file, and click on Yes, Yes, and OK when prompted. That’s it. You have successfully removed the context menu option.
Video:
- If you are logged in as a standard user, you will be prompted to enter the administrator’s password while trying to take ownership of a file, folder or drive.
- You may also have to approve the UAC prompt.
- Application files (EXE, BAT, CMD, and MSC) do not support this option. So they will still have “Run as administrator” instead of “Take Ownership” option in the context menu.
- When you take ownership of a folder, you are automatically granted ownership of all the files and subfolders inside the selected folder.