Booting to the original account in the "Document and Settings" folder.

[Nycmodel23]

I setup a dual boot situation with Win 98 & Win XP pro.
I connected another hard drive to my system and installed
Win 2000. When I took off the drive with Win 2000 on it
and booted up my system that has XP, it was looking for
Win 2000. So I reinstalled Win 98 on the C: drive and a
new installation of XP on the D: drive. Now in my
documents and settings folder I have two folders. One
with the original XP setup and the second with the new XP
setup. When XP boots up, it goes to the second XP
folder. I want to know how do I get XP to load my
original folder. I tried booting into Win 98 and
deleting the second folder but when I booted back into
XP, it recreated the second folder. Should I cut my
losses and delete the first folder or can I save the
first folder? Please email me @ (e-mail address removed)

And a happy Labor Day to all!

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

You can't recover it if you did a new installation of WinXP. A repair
install would have preserved it. When you reinstalled, it created new
security ID's and the old ones (associated with the old user accounts) are
not recognized under the new system. Take ownership of any files you wish to
save and move them to your new accounts, then delete the old user folders.

Incidentally, as an FYI, when you installed Win2000, it overwrote the XP
bootloader with the Win2000 version (which does not recognize WinXP). All
you really needed to do to fix it was to boot the XP CD, load the Recovery
Console and run bootcfg /rebuild from the command prompt. This would also
have setup a triple boot for you.

Some articles that will help you:

HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP [Q308421]
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

HOW TO: Install and Use the Recovery Console in Windows XP [Q307654]
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307654

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone