SubInACL Posted August 23, 2004 at 12:00 am

This is a classic example of how I spend far too much time dealing with stupid stuff.

Some background: I wanted to do a clean install of Cygwin to remove unneeded packages—again, unnecessary, but why not? Removal is simple enough, just delete the Cygwin directory and a few registry keys. My attempts to delete said directory are greeted with generic Access is denied errors. Okay, so the files aren’t in use. In fact, they are just shortcuts (.lnk files). A quick Google search reveals KB320081 on the Microsoft Knowledge Base. I obtained the subinacl tool as directed, but I opted to go with the full Windows 2003 Resource Kit instead of the stand-alone tool. The caveat, of course, is that the version packaged with the Resource Kit will not work with XP (at least not with my configuration). After much wasted energy, I discovered that the stand-alone version of the subinacl tool is more up-to-date and it does indeed work.

So if you’re having trouble with subinacl, check which version you have by running the command without arguments. Like so:

C:\>subinacl
SubInAcl version 5.2.3790.1180
...

The version that comes with the Resource Kit is 4.0.1.1604 and it will give you no love (or useful diagnostic output).