Hard disk crash, reinstall, restore from backup, disable admin account, access denied everywhere (pa

[Russ Smith]

(Extensive!) Background information: 600MHz Pentium III, gigabyte RAM. After
many a fruitful year the hard drive crashed hard. Installed another with
NTFS, formatted and partitioned as one large drive (prior disk was
20+GBytes, new one is about 75GBytes).

Since this machine originally was running something like Win98, the original
Windows XP Pro installation was an upgrade, not a pure install. So I used my
XP upgrade disk to install a new XP Pro on the empty newly-formatted new
drive (with appropriate Win98 disk insertion when I needed to), then an old
Service Pack 1 disk to install THAT, then a Service Pack 2 disk to get THAT
in, then Microsoft's Update site to get all this fairly old software updated
with security and bug fixes to about now, etc etc etc.

During this recovery, one of the later updates caused funniness with my
video card, making the display unchangeable at a resolution of 640x480.
While attempting to fix this, I restored a full backup I had on the second
disk drive of the machine, asking to restore all files (not simply Documents
and Settings, for example) since I had a lot of stuff on that dead hard
drive I wanted back...

======
SOMEPLACE during this convoluted attempt at system recovery I disabled the
original Administrator account since I had my own account named something
else with administrator privileges from which I was doing everything. For
some reason, and not necessarily in the order I'm relating here, I also
changed the Administrator account's password - maybe I did that first, maybe
after reenabling the Administrator account to try something else out to fix
the display. In any case, the default Administrator account had itself
disabled, password changed, re-enabled, etc. It is now enabled. The second
differently-named administrator-rights account exists as well (and is quite
usable).
======

....The fix for the display turned out to be to back out the display card
device driver to the prior version.

BUT...probably due to the putzing around with the original Administrator
account I twanged something bad that reeks of permissions problems.

=====================

Foreground information: Creating a new account without administrator
privileges appears to work fine but when attempting to log into that new
account I get the error message with Explorer.exe of

"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002).
Click on OK to terminate the application"

and, of course, the login fails horribly (blank screen with no ability to
get out of it other than reboot).

The Task Scheduler, as well, fails to start properly with an Event Log entry
of: Access is denied.

And something called SidebySide - an application/service/whatever that NEVER
appeared before on this system in its prior working states - also gives an
"Access is denied" set of error event entries. I'm sure trying to use other
services could also give "Access is denied" errors.

=====================

Anyway, I need a working system back. I want to fully restore a full backup
I have - that backup PRE-dates some Microsoft Update patches. I used to have
three user accounts on this system - I'd like them back, too, as they all
were before the hard disk crash INCLUDING IE favorites, Outlook Express
stuff, etc etc etc.

I can do just about anything - this system is essentially unused until that
full restore takes place.

I need any and all knowledgable advice on where to go - from "Give it up -
reinstall everything but DON'T do X" to "Twiddle this particular registry
entry and you're completely ready to go" and anything in between.

Thanks for any help.

Russ

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

(Extensive!) Background information: 600MHz Pentium III, gigabyte
RAM. After many a fruitful year the hard drive crashed hard.
Installed another with NTFS, formatted and partitioned as one large
drive (prior disk was 20+GBytes, new one is about 75GBytes).

Since this machine originally was running something like Win98, the
original Windows XP Pro installation was an upgrade, not a pure
install. So I used my XP upgrade disk to install a new XP Pro on the
empty newly-formatted new drive (with appropriate Win98 disk
insertion when I needed to), then an old Service Pack 1 disk to
install THAT, then a Service Pack 2 disk to get THAT in,

Just you know for next time, there was no need to install SP1 before SP2.
SP2 includes SP1.

then
Microsoft's Update site to get all this fairly old software updated
with security and bug fixes to about now, etc etc etc.
During this recovery, one of the later updates caused funniness with
my video card, making the display unchangeable at a resolution of
640x480. While attempting to fix this, I restored a full backup I had
on the second disk drive of the machine, asking to restore all files
(not simply Documents and Settings, for example) since I had a lot of
stuff on that dead hard drive I wanted back...

======
SOMEPLACE during this convoluted attempt at system recovery I
disabled the original Administrator account since I had my own
account named something else with administrator privileges from which
I was doing everything.

You should *never* disable the account named Administrator. That's your
fallback if your other account gets corrupted.

For some reason, and not necessarily in the
order I'm relating here, I also changed the Administrator account's
password - maybe I did that first, maybe after reenabling the
Administrator account to try something else out to fix the display.
In any case, the default Administrator account had itself disabled,
password changed, re-enabled, etc. It is now enabled. The second
differently-named administrator-rights account exists as well (and is
quite usable). ======

...The fix for the display turned out to be to back out the display
card device driver to the prior version.

BUT...probably due to the putzing around with the original
Administrator account I twanged something bad that reeks of
permissions problems.
=====================

Foreground information: Creating a new account without administrator
privileges appears to work fine but when attempting to log into that
new account I get the error message with Explorer.exe of

"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0150002).
Click on OK to terminate the application"

and, of course, the login fails horribly (blank screen with no
ability to get out of it other than reboot).

The Task Scheduler, as well, fails to start properly with an Event
Log entry of: Access is denied.

And something called SidebySide - an application/service/whatever
that NEVER appeared before on this system in its prior working states
- also gives an "Access is denied" set of error event entries. I'm
sure trying to use other services could also give "Access is denied"
errors.
=====================

Anyway, I need a working system back. I want to fully restore a full
backup I have - that backup PRE-dates some Microsoft Update patches.
I used to have three user accounts on this system - I'd like them
back, too, as they all were before the hard disk crash INCLUDING IE
favorites, Outlook Express stuff, etc etc etc.

I can do just about anything - this system is essentially unused
until that full restore takes place.

I need any and all knowledgable advice on where to go - from "Give it
up - reinstall everything but DON'T do X" to "Twiddle this particular
registry entry and you're completely ready to go" and anything in
between.

I'm confused about what your question is here. You say you want to restore
your full backup. What's preventing you from doing that?

 

[Russ Smith]

I'm confused about what your question is here. You say you want to restore
your full backup. What's preventing you from doing that?

When I encountered the strange "attempt login and break completely" error of
non-admin users accounts I stopped dead with any idea of restoring one of my
full backup files again.

Are you saying that, even in this strange state, restoring via "Backup" will
restore the system to an essentially completely restored state as it was at
the time of the backup? Including all user accounts?

I'd think there's gotta be at least a couple gotchas here (like "Be sure to
disable your McAfee first" and "Say 'Yes' in answer to the XYZ question
during Restore", etc etc etc).

In any case, your response is very much appreciated (and if it is as easy as
a "simple" re-restore of that full backup, your response IS the rough
equivalent of "Twiddle this regsitry value and you're done" and is a
refreshingly simple thing to do...in theory).

Russ

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

:

When I encountered the strange "attempt login and break completely"
error of non-admin users accounts I stopped dead with any idea of
restoring one of my full backup files again.

Are you saying that, even in this strange state, restoring via
"Backup" will restore the system to an essentially completely
restored state as it was at the time of the backup? Including all
user accounts?

It depends on your backup. You said "full" backup. How did you make it? With
what program? For example, I backup to an external harddrive using Acronis
True Image, and yes, I can restore without any need for anything left on the
drive at all. If a backup program doesn't let you do this, then it isn't
really a full backup.

If you are using the NTbackup program that's part of Windows, I know very
little about what restrictions it has or how it works. If that's the case,
I'll bow out and perhaps someone else can help you.

 

[Russ Smith]

...If you are using the NTbackup program that's
part of Windows, I know very little about what
restrictions it has or how it works. If that's the case,
I'll bow out and perhaps someone else can help you.

I am indeed using whatever Backup program was invoked
when I right-clicked on the drive under a Windows Explorer
view, selected the Tools tab, and selected the "Backup"
item on the tab.

Any further assistance by others appreciated - and your
re-reply totally appreciated though you have bowed out...

Russ