I'm with Rick on this.
Before you go any further, I think you should run a diagnostic on the hard
drive. Check the hard drive manufacturer's website for their diagnostic
tools. Making note of their instructions for making and using the tools
disk, download the tools, create the disk as instructed and run the
diagnostic to check the integrity of the disk and whether or not it might be
failing.
If the disk is fine, assuming you have an available separate partition from
the one on which your current setup resides, you could do a new install of
XP to that partition and then copy your data from the old setup to the new
one. ***It all would be much simpler and you would save yourself a lot of
heartache if you just had a recent backup from which you could restore your
data.
In any event, if you don't have an available partition, you will need third
party software such as an XP compatible version of Partition Commander or
System Commander to create one as XP does not have the tools to resize
partitions on the fly.
Once created and XP is installed, you may have problems accessing the data,
this is a file ownership issue related to NTFS, assuming your current setup
is using that file system. If that is the case and you receive such a
warning, you would need to do the following to take ownership:
This sounds like a file ownership issue related to NTFS. 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.
--
In memory of our dear friend, MVP Alex Nichol.
Michael Solomon MS-MVP
Windows Shell/User
https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx
Backup is a PC User's Best Friend
DTS-L.Org:
http://www.dts-l.org/