LSASS.EXE error with loss of data

[B Todesco]

I received an LSASS.EXE error several weeks ago that would
not allow me to reboot my computer, even in Safe Mode.
Just prior to this I had made some changes in permissions
(I had Administrator privileges on my computer)and I had
installed the most recent Win2000 critical update.

My IT department partitioned the hard drive, created
WINNT2 and managed to get the computer operating again. I
am missing the files that were stored in "My Documents,"
where I maintained my .pst file and all work generated
from my computer, under the old configuration. Searching
for *.doc and *.pst documents on the entire hard drive
does not locate the missing data.

The path to this data under the original configuration
was "WINNT/Profiles/Administrator/My Documents/ . . . "
My C drive now has two WINNT folders -- "WINNT"
and "WINNT2." The WINNT folder includes the "Profiles"
subfolder (but not the path to "My Documents"), while the
WINNT2 folder does not.

The file path to "My Documents" under the new
configuration goes to C:\Documents and
Settings\btodesco\My Documents.

Is there any way to reestablish the original configuration
(no, no backup available) and/or recover the missing data?

Thanks.

 

[Steven L Umbach]

Sounds like you may be out of luck. They did a parallel install but you said they
partitioned the hard drive which usually may involve destroying the old data unless
something like Partition Manager was used or there originally was more than one
partition [both installations are on the c drive?]. There probably is no way to
configure back to original and your best bet is to search for the data possibly also
using a program that looks for erased files. When browsing through the drive looking
for your files, make sure that you show hidden files and system files using
Explorer/tools/folder optopns/view. When something like this happens, the safest
procedure is to put the hard drive as a slave/secondary drive in another computer
running W2K/XP Pro to try to extract data from the operating system that way. ---
Steve

http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm --- example of file recovery tool.