I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for. However, the unix command 'touch' also does the same thing (and is available for Win in the cygwin gnu binaries..).
Using touch on a file owned by root, to which I have write access (and write/executable access to the directory its in) works.
It can take a parameter of the time you want to set (see the manpage) or even set it the same as another file.
C.