In our windows domain I am the Domain Administrator. I log into my servers with my domain administrator account via Remote Desktop.
Now, I just installed Windows Server 2012 and am working in it via RDP and discover that I cannot make changes to a text file because I don't have permissions. This problem extends to any file - not just text files, and the problem is not that they are set to read-only.
So just to make sure, I add my domain account to the local administrators group on that machine. I have also disabled UAC since I am behind a fancy firewall-router and have no security risks from local users.
So I go and check permissions on the c:\program files (x86)\ directory and see that the administrators group has no edit rights on that directory! Alas!
Then I try to give permissions to the Administrator's group and discover that I am not allowed (I'm Domain Admin!). To prove that, here is a screenshot. You can see that all the boxes are unchecked - they are actually disabled and I can't click on them.
Ah, but a funny thing is this: If I look at the Users group for that directory's permissions, I see that group has permissions to Read & Execute but not modify. They have more permissions than Administrators!
How can I give my Domain Administrator account rights to edit a text file in that directory? Is there some local group policy setting?
Note: This problem does not extend to folders in the root of C. It only happens in special Windows directories. But I never had this problem in other Windows Server versions.
The simplest way is to take ownership of the directory (which as an administrator, you can do), and then change the security permissions to suit your needs - add the administrators group or your user to the security permissions and allow full control, in this case.
I've run into the same issue on Windows Server, changing permission and ownership didn't help. But if I open my text editor as Administrator, I can then open the file from within the editor in write mode. It's annoying to have to do it this way rather than edit files from the context menu in Explorer but found this was the only workaround.