Setting file permissions from command line in Windows 2000/2003

Microsoft provide a tool for this purpose called xcacls.exe which is part of the Windows 2000 Resource Kit or Windows 2003 Support Tools (Adminpak).

Briefly, say you wanted to set the permissisons on a group of files so that 'Everyone' has Full Control, you would issue the following command:

xcacls *.* /E /C /G everyone:F

To view the permissions on a single file you could just use:

xcacls filename.txt

More information can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318754