I have installed my son's hard drive as a slave in my computer to try to recover some data off of it after corrupting the boot sector.
He had forgotten his password and I did not have an admin acct (me bad!). I attempted a procedure found on the internet to try to reset the password, consisting of booting from WIN XP disc and reinstalling winXP and after the first reboot during the installation you would hit when the "installing devices" message appears.
I had forgotten that he has a dual boot XP/LINUX system that defaults to LINUX during boot. I missed the selection process and it booted into LINUX. So I restarted the computer, but the installation did not go as planned and now it was asking me if I wanted to format or save the file system. I chose save the file system. However it wanted an admin password. I didn't have one. I turned the machine off. (frustration!) When I turned it back on, it was stuck in a reboot loop.
So I have pulled the drive out & have it on my computer and am trying to recover data before I format the disk. I am trying to access his My Documents folder and am getting an "directory not accessible - access denied" pop up message. I can't figure out how to get ownership or get access to that directory to copy the data off.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Mel
Hi,
Sorry to hear the tale of horror on your sons hard drive.
I'm not sure why you needed a password recovery technique merely to take data off a hard drive using a different operating sytem. It should be sufficient just to install the hard drive as slave and copy away!
If your son had been using Encrypted File System (EPS) or any programme to encrypt his files/folder then the prospect of recovery is bleaker than it is at the moment.
It might be sensible to try and get into "Recovery Console" using the Windows XP installation disc, run chkdsk and try to fix the boot from there.
Post back if you need detailed instructions or a link to them.
If the data is valuable then a professional data recovery service would be able to help, but at a cost, (starting around £400-£500 (GBP) say about $800-$1000 (USD)
Good luck and let us know how you get on.
Regards
paws
Hi,
If you have managed now to view in your computer your sons hard drive, but are still getting a "permissions problem with access denied" it may be that your son had set a password for his user account and made files "Private", he may also have set a folder to "Private" in the Sharing and Security area.
Either of these actions (under NTFS) would prevent files being accessed by others users.
You could try the following. on your Windows XP Home Edition to change the permissions:
1 Boot into safe mode
2 Log on with main Administrator password (default is blank)
3 Navigate to folder concerned that you want to view
4 Right click on required folder
5 Click on Sharing and Security
6 Select "Security"
7 Select "Advanced" "Ownership"
8 Highlight group entry for "Administrators"
9 Place a tick (checkmark) in "Changed ownership on sub-containers and objects"
10 Click "Apply"
11 You may get a "reset permissions" enquiry if so click "OK"
If you now close down and reboot, the permissions will have been reset and you might be able to copy off the required data.
Good luck
Regards
paws
Paws,
Thank you very much. Through safe mode I have been able to copy files over to my hard drive from my son's. I tried to change the permissions while in safe mode and it appeared to open access, however after rebooting and starting up in normal mode, I still could not access the files. They are located in his Documents and Settings folder under his "Name" folder. I still got the access denied message. My son maintains that he did not set any special permissions.
With all that said I do believe I will be able to copy over the data he needs for school, within safe mode.
You mentioned in your post that with the Recovery Console with the Windows XP installation disk I might be able to rebuild/fix the boot sector using chkdsk. I have never attempted that. If you wouldn't mind giving me some advice on how to go about that, I would appreciate it.
I was thinking that I was going to be forced into reformatting his drive, but if I can recover the boot area I think this mistake might be a little less painful.
Thank you so much for your help so far.
Mel
Here's a link to using the Recovery Console, which shows you the commands available.
NOTE
You don't need to actually install the Recovery Console just put in the disc and use it.
Kelly is a Microsoft MVP so her information is reliable and authoritative, but please note her warning that says: "Important Note: Because the Recovery Console is quite powerful, it is recommended for use only by advanced users or administrators."
It might be best to proceed slowly, on entering the Recovery Console start with the command
X:\chkdsk /r
where X is the descriptor of the damaged drive, and note the space needed between the "k" and the "/"
reboot and see how you go before trying the other commands to fix your boot.
