Desperate help needed; need to get extremely important files off a 15GB WinXP drive.

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RavinDJ

Supreme [H]ardness
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Okay... here's the story. My dad had WinXP Home loaded on his machine a while back. Now, that machine still works fine with the hard-drive in there, but there's no guest account and the only one account (my dad's) has a password on it. So, I took it it out and plugged it as a slave into another computer. Worked great and I could take off everything, except for the c:\documents and settings\andy directory, which was the one that my dad had used when he logged in and with the password. My question to you guys... how can I either break that password or go around it in order to access c:\documents and settings\andy\desktop\ and the My Documents directory, etc.

All help will be much appreciated! Thanks!!
 
Take ownership of the directory. Then, change permissions accordingly.

Unless it's encrypted. In which case, I'm not sure what you can do.
 
XOR != OR said:
Take ownership of the directory. Then, change permissions accordingly.

Unless it's encrypted. In which case, I'm not sure what you can do.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply! But, could you explain briefly how to take ownership of the directory? I know WinXP a lot, but I've done anything with ownership, or active directory in Win2000, or anything like that.

Thanks!
 
RavinDJ said:
I know WinXP a lot
Click to expand...

Hmmm...if had a dollar for everytime I heard that one...

Assuming your logging in with admin rights, right-click the folder in question. Go to properties > security > and then advanced. Click the owner tab, and select the admin account your logging in as...as the owner. This should allow you access to the folder and it's contents.
 
OWN YOUR BOXEN!!!

If it's encrypted, and you didn't export the key, you are screwed.

This is a note to all who encrypt your file systems, export your key and store in a safe place.
 
djnes said:
Hmmm...if had a dollar for everytime I heard that one...

Assuming your logging in with admin rights, right-click the folder in question. Go to properties > security > and then advanced. Click the owner tab, and select the admin account your logging in as...as the owner. This should allow you access to the folder and it's contents.
Click to expand...


Eh... yeah, I know what you mean. I guess I don't know XP as much as I thought I did.

In any case, when I right-click on the folder and go to PROPERTIES, there is no SECURITY tab on the top. Just GENERAL, SHARING, and CUSTOMIZE. There is ADVANCE button on the GENERAL tab, but that's about it. In there, there's no such thing as SECURITY, though.

Any input?

Remember... it's WinXP Home.

I appreciate your help... this data is very, very, very important to me (sentimental value).

Any other ideas?

Thanks...
 
Damn...I forgot that XP Home doesn't have that. I think this is where I'd be firing up my copy of Norton Ghost Corporate, sending the drive to my server as an image file, and then extracting the data. You could try a drive imaging program.
 
djnes said:
Damn...I forgot that XP Home doesn't have that. I think this is where I'd be firing up my copy of Norton Ghost Corporate, sending the drive to my server as an image file, and then extracting the data. You could try a drive imaging program.
Click to expand...

Hmmm... I tried right-clicking on a directory on my WinXP Pro machine (my main rig) and I still only get 3 tabs, the same ones I get under XP Home.

Norton Ghost, huh?

Nothing else, huh?
 
Well, if you can figure out how to get the files off with a bootable linux CD, you could copy them into another directory and see if you can get at them. If they are encrypted, though, that wont work.

There is a way to get the SAM from the old machine's HD, crack it, and get the password.

I'm not sure if telling you how to do it is against forum rules though.
 
In your folder options under View, the very last options called Simple File Sharing must be disabled for you to view those extra tabs.

After that you will be able to set the permissions on the folders (security)

Cheers,
 
Eigtball said:
In your folder options under View, the very last options called Simple File Sharing must be disabled for you to view those extra tabs.

After that you will be able to set the permissions on the folders (security)

Cheers,
Click to expand...


This should work. I guess you left both of your XP installs to the default "Fisher-Price File Sharing"
 
djnes said:
This should work. I guess you left both of your XP installs to the default "Fisher-Price File Sharing"
Click to expand...

Hehe Fisher price... :D
 
fpxp.GIF


hehe...
 
Ranma_Sao said:
Boot into safe mode to get the permission stuff. That was disabled in non safe mode, to avoid confusing users.
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Click to expand...

Users or techs? ;)
 
You know if you search you can find pages that tell you how to get the secuirty tab in xp home in regular mode, I think I've done it once, it involves putting in a patch that is made for winxp pro I think. I can't really remeber but search for it.
 
Phoenix86 said:
Users or techs? ;)
Click to expand...
I agree, I work on Setup, not Shell, it confused the hell out of me too once, that's why I asked the shell guys how to make it work. ;)
 
How about the administrative account on the system? There's utilities out there that will reset the admin password on an XP/2000 box provided that you can boot from the CDRom. After you remove the admin password.. reset your dad's account and log back in. Done. Or do the quick thing that XOR said and just reset the permissions on the directory. That would actually be the quickest/easiest way.
 
Eigtball said:
In your folder options under View, the very last options called Simple File Sharing must be disabled for you to view those extra tabs.

After that you will be able to set the permissions on the folders (security)

Cheers,
Click to expand...

Could someone please try this in XP Home.

Thanks
 
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