Can't get into my files

Hello everyone, My computer got a million viruses the other day all in a matter of minutes. I was able to delete them, but now I can't get my computer to restart. It keeps giving me a message saying: " NTLDR is compressed" whatever that means. It also tells me to press CNTRL + ALT + DELETE to restart and everytime I do it, it goes back tothe NLTDR is compressed message. What my husband did was took the hard drive out, plugged it into a different computer and installed windows to that hard drive (am I making sense, so far?). For some reason, I could open SHARED DOCUMENT

Help!!!!

sorry guys. I hit enter by accident. As I was saying, I could get to the shared documents/other user's files, but my own. How can I get my own files to open? I appreciate any help anyone can give. Thanks

Hi mavar, welcome to WTT.

It's a bit difficult to understand what you are saying but what I get is your computer became infected with a lot of viruses and you somehow cleaned them up but then the computer would not boot and you were getting a NTLDR is Compressed error message.

Then it sounds like your husband removed the hard drive from the computer and installed it in another computer and then installed XP to it.

Is the hard drive still in the other computer or is it now back in the original computer and you are booting it but can't access your original data?

In either case, you need to Take ownership of the folder under Documents and Settings that your original data is in.

The original problem is fairly easy to fix but it may be too late to do that now. See the first reply in this series of posts for how you could have (maybe still can?) fixed it: http://www.madboot.com/index.php?option=co…p;topic=4.msg18

One more question. How did you clean up the viruses? Did you do this on your own or by following directions at a malware removal site? Id you did this on your own there is a very good chance the hard drive may still be infected, so I'd recommend you go to the Welcome New Members forum, read the info there and follow the posted directions. Once you receive a clean bill of health, come back here if you have any additional questions or concerns.

Hi Ztruker, I apologize for not being clear with what happened to my computer. As I'm sure you can tell, I'm not computer savvy. I explained it the best I could and yes, you understood it perfectly. I cleaned and deleted the virused myself at first, then I got the error message. After attempting many times to reboot my computer without success, I asked a coworker of mine who happens to be the IT guy for my company. He said he deleted the viruses and was able to create a DVD backup for the SHARED DOCUMENTS. I explained to him that besides what I had on the shared docs, I also had very important files, pics, music, etc on my side of the "users" (note: I had 2 users on that computer, one for myself which was password protected and a guest user). When I brought the DVD and my hard drive home, it still gave me the NTLDR error message. That's when my husband plugged it into his computer, and after seeing the same error message he decided to try to install XP windows (this is before finding out instructions online), and was able to see the SHARED DOCUMENTS. I tried to open the MY DOCUMENTS, MY PICS, etc, but it kept saying "access denied". Is it because it was password protected or does it even matter? We have taken the hard drive out of his computer, but I don't want to give up. I would really like to save what I have on it - let's just say, my whole life is in that file. I hope it's not too late.. please say it isn't… Thanks

Okay, got it. The "Access denied" error message is what I needed to see.

You need to Take ownership of folders and files.

That link should tell you how to do this. If any questions, please post back.