Lost Data During Parallel install?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Aaron
  • Start date Start date
A

Aaron

I was with tech support for a few hours yesterday trying
to resolve the following:

My machine would not boot and kept telling me that "No
Operating System could be found". We ran a few utilities
from the prompt and long story short, we ended up
installing a second xp os on the same partition in a
different folder. I was told that by doing this, I would
be able to access all of my documents, audio, video etc,
and that then I would need to retrieve all that and then
do a reformat and clean install. It's definately going to
be a pain in the ass, but if that's what it takes, that's
fine. However, now that I've booted using a different XP
OS, it acts like a new computer obviously, and the problem
is that I can't find any of my old data. I had strictly
administrator priveleges on my user account on my old
setup, and I'm wondering if that is causing me not to be
able to find anything from my old setup. Please help.
Does anyone have any suggestion?

Thanks much,
 
If you did in fact install to a separate folder and you didn't delete the
original installation, something you could only do by deleting and
recreating the partition, the files should still be there. While privilege
might prevent you from accessing the files, it should not prevent you from
seeing them. If you know some of the file types, do a search in Windows
Explorer for those types and that may take you to the location of the files.

However, once you find the files, admin or no admin, you will not be able to
access them until you take ownership as follows:
Note, file ownership and permissions supersede administrator rights. How
you resolve it depends upon which version of XP you are running.

XP-Home

Unfortunately, XP Home using NTFS is essentially hard wired for "Simple File
Sharing" at system level.

However, you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. Reboot, and start
hitting F8, a menu should eventually appear and one of the
options is Safe Mode. Select it. Note, it will ask for the administrator's
password. This is not your administrator account, rather it is the
machine's administrator account for which users are asked to create a
password during setup.

If you created no such password, when requested, leave blank and press
enter.

Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll to
the bottom of the list, if it shows "Enable Simple File Sharing" deselect it
and click apply and ok. If it shows nothing or won't let you make a change,
move on to the next step.

Navigate to the files, right click, select properties, go to the Security
tab, click advanced, go to the Owner tab and select the user that was logged
on when you were refused permission to access the files. Click apply and
ok. Close the properties box, reopen it, click add and type in the name of
the user you just enabled. If you wish to set ownership for everything in
the folder, at the bottom of the Owner tab is the following selection:
"Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," select it as well.

Once complete, you should be able to do what you wish with these files when
you log back on as that user.

XP-Pro

If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account to
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folder
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is not
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok.

If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user,
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, click
Advanced, go to the Owner tab,
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, you
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,"
place a check in the box and click apply and ok.

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in the
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again,
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and be
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type the
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessary
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click apply
and ok.

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder even
in a limited account.
 
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