Topic awaiting preservation: More computer problems... (Page 1 of 1)

Well, I finally put my computer together and got it up and running. All my files were saved from my old user on Windows XP, however I no longer have access to them. Every time I try to go into My Documents from my old user I get an error that says 'access denied'. A friend of mine was able to to get access to them using a bootable CD version of linux however, I can't move the files and I can't delete the files, I can only access them. I also have the ability to burn all those files, and that's an option but it would just take forever and I still don't know how I would delete those files after I have backed them up.

So, is there any other way to recover those files?

my guess:
Login as Administrator, change the ownership & permissions on those files to allow "all" users full access, then login as you again and try.

If that fails, try booting into safemode as administrator and do the above.


That you can get at them with Linux is because Linux only respects the general permissions on the windows filesystem, not on individual files.
/Dan

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{Proudly running OSX, Debian, WXP, W98, well not so proudly on the last 2...}-
-{ ?There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - Jeremy S. Anderson" }-

Yeah...stuff in My Documents are not going to be accessible from all users. They're private files.

Later,

C:\

quote:

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my guess:
Login as Administrator, change the ownership & permissions on those files to allow "all" users full access, then login as you again and try.

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How would I go about doing that?

When you installed XP you should have setup an Adminstrator user and password. Simply logout and login as adminstrator.

If you don't know the pass there are cracking utils out there or you can reinsall XP



.:[ Never resist a perfect moment ]:.

There is only one user and I am the admin.

You always have an Administrator account + a Guest account + at least one other which is you.
Unless you have a password set or if you have autologin enabled you won't see the screen where you login as other users.
What your user has is probably admin rights on almost everything, aka a power-user, as such you can do almost everything except take ownership of private files i think.

You can check that in the controlpanel->administrative tools->computer management->Local users and groups to see what users exists on your machine, however you cannot change passwords from there, that you need to do in the user management, then you need to know the old pw

Boot into safemode, that would probably be easiest, if I'm not mistaken you enter as the real Administrator by default then.

/Dan

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{Proudly running OSX, Debian, WXP, W98, well not so proudly on the last 2...}-
-{ ?There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - Jeremy S. Anderson" }-

Ok, I started in safe mode and logged in as the administrator, however I still was not able to have access to my files from my old user. =\

hm... did you

quote:

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change the ownership & permissions on those files to allow "all" users full access

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?

if that didn't work I'm stumped, an Administrator should be able to do that.
If all else fails... http://support.microsoft.com/ph/1173 or gooooooogle...


/D

{cell 260} {Blog}
-{Proudly running OSX, Debian, WXP, W98, well not so proudly on the last 2...}-
-{ ?There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - Jeremy S. Anderson" }-

are your old files on a different hard drive? Like a slave drive? Or is this the same hard drive?
If it's the same hard drive, can you not log in as that user and get the files? If its a different hard drive can you not boot from that drive and log in as Admin to get them?

Later,

C:\

It's on the same hard drive, but in order to recover those files when I reinstalled XP to format to my new MB, I created a new user/admin and my old WINDOWS folder was completely erased whilst the rest of my hard drive remained intact. The old user with all the files I want to save still has its own folder but I can't log on it.

Well for some reason it was too late to edit my post so I'll have to repost this.

When I opened the properties on the folder with the files I'm trying to recover a box came up to inform me that I was not allowed to change the ownership or permissions of the folder/files, even as an administrator.

hmmm...that's strange. I thought for sure the Administrator could change permissions on anything.

Well, not tryin' to but your balls but I guess this is a prime example of "Remember to back up important data".

Have you tried to copy the files through a command line? I doubt that would really make difference but you can always try. Other than that, the only thing I can suggest is to try Knoppix. I have heard of some people doing it that way. But, I'm not sure how.

Later,

C:\

Yea knoppix was how I was able to get access to the files. Through knoppix I can open them and burn them but I can't move or delete them =\. I think I'm just gonna end up buying a spindle of CDs and burning what I want to save and then reformat Windows =\.