How can Windows files and folder owners just vanish, and how to restore all of them at once?

Question

See, we have a file server running windows 2003 at our company, and suddenly most of the files and subfolders permissions are gone, lost even the owner, making it unaccessible even for the administrator.
So since it happend out of nowhere it's most possible to be a system flaw, how can I retrieve all the permisisons back or how can I restore the owner(s) ? Using the "Copy permissions to all subfolders and ....>" does not work, it says it cannot
apply the changes to the files. 
 Can any1 help? 

Answer 1

Hi,
Did you ever run chkdsk on a volume? If so, it could reset security descriptors and set NTFS permissions back to default.
You could install the hotfixs below to check results:
An update is available that lets the Chkdsk.exe tool compact the NTFS security descriptor stream in Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2
http://support2.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;919241
Error message when you run the Chkdsk.exe utility to fix a corrupted volume on a Windows Server 2003-based computer: "Stop 0x00000024"
http://support2.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;959608
You could also refer to the thread below to troubleshoot the issue:
Permissions Disappearing from Folders
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/c17ba53a-5919-4327-a9b9-727d6be299eb/permissions-disappearing-from-folders
Regards,
Mandy
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