SetACL is a free Windows software to manage permissions for registry keys, files, printers, services, and, WMI objects. From this software, you can set different access permissions for different users on your PC. You can set access permissions for files, Windows services, Windows registry keys, etc. The interface is quite intuitive and easy to use as you can easily browse to every corner of your system and manage permissions for each file, registry, etc. It automatically bypasses Windows security settings to show you files and folders inaccessible from the Windows Explorer. It really makes the process to set different access permissions for different users a really simple process. You just have to browse to a specific file, registry, service, etc and then set different access permissions for all users. I must say, this is a very good software for system admins as they can also create new registries and edit current registry values, in addition to, manage different files and registry access permissions using it.
Note: This software wasn’t free earlier but recently it was made free for personal and as well as commercial use. You can read more about it here.
How to use this free software to manage registry, files, etc access permissions for different users on PC:
Download SetACL from the link provided at the end of this review and install it. After that, upgrade it to the unrestricted version using this public key “RUMH5R-PREMM7-W38EA5-QTSQZ1-1HA1A6-CTXHUQ” which I got from its download page. Now, you are all set to use this free software and manage Windows registry permissions, files and folders permissions, Windows services permissions, and, other WMI objects permissions. This software also gives you the option to add a remote computer and set its registry permissions and other permissions that I mentioned. Unfortunately, I was unable to connect a PC from my network as it showed “The RPC server unavailable” error. You can check it out at your end see if it works.
Before you start playing around with this software, it might be a good idea to consider creating a system restore point and backup your important data. However, this software gives you the option to undo the changes made to the permissions of registries, files, etc but this option might not even help you if you don’t know anything about what you are going to do.
I tested this software by changing the permission of an EXE file to Read for all users on my PC and when I tried to execute the EXE file I got an error as shown in the screenshot below.
As expected, I wasn’t able to execute the EXE file due to the configured file permissions as shown in the screenshot below. To set the different permissions for different users, move to the desired Windows object i.e. registry, service, files, etc and then select a permission from the Permissions field against each user of the PC. In the end, click on the Save button to set file, registry, etc permissions.
For a user on your PC, you can set these different types of permissions:
- Standard permissions
- Full control
- Modify
- Read & Execute
- Read
- Write
- Specific permissions
- Traverse folder/execute file
- List folder contents
- Read attributes
- Read extended attributes
- Create files/write data
- Create folders/append data
- Write attributes
- Write extended attributes
- Delete subfolders and files
- Delete
- Read permissions
- Change permissions
- Take ownership
Verdict:
SetACL studio is a free software to set different registry, files, services, etc permissions for different users of a PC. Managing different permissions for different users on a PC can be quite a tedious task as it requires accessing a whole lot of options. With this software, you can set different permissions for different users from the same place. A very good software for system admins. Check it out from the link provided below.
