I changed WindowsApps folder ownership to my account, now my games won't start, or uninstall, or re-install, or show in explorer

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oddgoat45

I've made a right mess of this. So, I wanted to install mods into No Man's Sky, which I installed as part of the xbox game pass app. MS, in their infinite wisdom, have locked all editing of files in WindowsApps, so I tried to take ownership of the NMS game's folder. This kept reverting, so I took ownership of the WindowsApps folder. This gave me access to the folders, but has caused a litany of other problems...


Most of my installed games won't start - the only unaffected game is Forza Horizon 4. All others silently fail when I hit play. (the games that are failing are Grounded, Saints Row 4, No Man's Sky, and Rage 2).


If I try to open the related game folders in explorer, it gives an error stating the system cannot access this location.


So I tried uninstalling NMS through the app, and it said it was gone, but the folder remains and my free disk space has not changed. So I tried manually deleting the folder - it gave an access error, but when I clicked try again it went through the normal deletion process/progress bar display. The folder is now gone from explorer, but my free disk space has not changed.


I tried reinstalling NMS through the xbox app and it gives error code 0x80070057 and not much other info. Googling this error suggests a file system error.


So far the fixes I have tried are: SFC scan (no errors), chkdsk (no errors) DISM (no errors), malware scan (a couple of minor hits, but just the usual adware, now removed). I tried changing the ownership of WindowsApps folder to 'Everyone' and making sure it has full access rights, no effect. I tried changing my account to super-user, no effect.


I'm completely at a loss of what to try next. I think I've not only completely borked my xbox apps install, but have given myself a large amount of phantom data on my drive which I don't know how to erase.


I could really use some ideas of what to try next.


Also, could someone please tell me what the original ownership account is for the Program Files/WindowsApps folder - I can try changing it back to that if I can find what it is (I really should have written it down!).

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