Write Protection Problem

O

ObscureShape

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 11, 2002
Messages
64
I recently had a problem with my hard disk and it made me unable to boot my machine - I was getting an 'unable to mount boot partition' error. This disk had been playing up for a while in various ways, and I thought it had finally decided to call it a day..
So, I installed a new hard drive, installed WindowsXP and so on and thought I'd put the old drive in a secondary to see if I could get any of my old data off it.

First off, it saw the disk but said it was corrupt.. I did a scandisk on it, and that made me able to access it. Every folder that is besides the one I wanted to - In Documents and Settings, the user home 'Typical'.

My old user was Typical, on the old disk, on the old windows install. I need to get in that folder to get some of my old data back (LOTS of patches etc., college work - all sorts).

So, how can I get in to a private users 'my documents' that is from an old windows install on a secondary disk?

Sorry if that is very wordy with no real content or infomation that can assist you, but best I could explain/write it up :)

Thanks for your help.
 
well, the question is, is this an NTFS or FAT32 formatted drive? i'll assume NTFS for these suggestions....

if this is XP Pro, when you created your user profile if you chose to "make these folders and files private" then you have restricted access on that profile folder in documents and settings. the security hash is looking for a security ID that existed on the other windows install, that does not exist on the new install. ideally, when you installed the new copy of windows, the second drive should have had its permissions reset, but that is not always the case.

if you're using windows xp home, then you are out of luck doing anythign in the GUI, you definitely need to use the recovery console. however, if you can get ahold of a copy of ERD Commander, you can boot from that cd and force reset of allt he permissions on that disk.

if your drive is formatted with FAT32, none of this will work. try booting from a windows 98 boot floppy and see if you can run scandisk from there instead of from inside windows, maybe that will recover the corrupted files (of course if this is the case, then the permissions issue has nothing to do with your problem)
 
Seeing as I dont really have the funds to buy this program, has anybody else got any other suggestions?

Thanks a lot for your help either way.
 
We need to know the exact error message your getting when attempting to access the old folders/files.
 
Well the old drive is E:. I can access all files/folders on that drive until I go to my old user's directory, E:\Documents and Settings\Typical (Typical being the older username).

The exact error is :

E:\Documents and Settings\Typical
Access is denied.
 
ObscureShape said:
Well the old drive is E:. I can access all files/folders on that drive until I go to my old user's directory, E:\Documents and Settings\Typical (Typical being the older username).

The exact error is :

E:\Documents and Settings\Typical
Access is denied.
Click to expand...

Simple fix.

Take ownership of the folder which will also included subfolders and files. A quick search of the boards should result some information on how to accomplish this.
 
I feel pity. Must be because most of my user's are already on vacation and I've had a light day.

Click the "pity" link for the fix process.
 
Hehe thanks a lot for your help.

In the end I used EasyRecovery Professional 6 to achieve it.. Great program for tonnes of stuff, I just discovered it :D

Thanks a lot though, read through that and commited to memory :)
 
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