Documents and Settings folder missing

P

Paul

Hey, I've got a computer that I'm working on for a friend. They got the
missing hal.dll error. Tried restoring the file but could not boot into safe
mode. Anyway, before doing a repair I'm trying to back up their documents.
I've got their laptop drive as a slave in my computer. I can see everything
but "Documents and Settings". I have checked the "show hidden files and
folders" box but it's still not there. They were running XP SP2. I'm
running XP SP3. They had a password on their user account.

I noticed that they didn't have a boot.ini file so I put one there using the
generic setting, there is no other OS installed. I replaced their hall.dll
file with mine and still no change.

I booted up in ERD Commander 2007, reset all permissions, performed a system
file scan/repair and it repaired 3 files one of which was just a help file,
the other two didn't seem like anything that would be a big deal. I
performed a ERD System Restore and just restored the last action and that
didn't help.

I am at a stopping point.

How can I get to their Documents and Settings folder so I can backup all
their stuff or fix this problem?

Thanks for the help.

Paul
 
P

Pegasus [MVP]

Paul said:
Hey, I've got a computer that I'm working on for a friend. They got the
missing hal.dll error. Tried restoring the file but could not boot into
safe mode. Anyway, before doing a repair I'm trying to back up their
documents. I've got their laptop drive as a slave in my computer. I can
see everything but "Documents and Settings". I have checked the "show
hidden files and folders" box but it's still not there. They were running
XP SP2. I'm running XP SP3. They had a password on their user account.

I noticed that they didn't have a boot.ini file so I put one there using
the generic setting, there is no other OS installed. I replaced their
hall.dll file with mine and still no change.

I booted up in ERD Commander 2007, reset all permissions, performed a
system file scan/repair and it repaired 3 files one of which was just a
help file, the other two didn't seem like anything that would be a big
deal. I performed a ERD System Restore and just restored the last action
and that didn't help.

I am at a stopping point.

How can I get to their Documents and Settings folder so I can backup all
their stuff or fix this problem?

Thanks for the help.

Paul

Perhaps the folder no longer exists? Here is how you can find out for sure:
- Boot into ERD Command.
- Type these commands:
cd "c:\Documents and Settings"
md "c:\Documents and Settings"
What reponse do you get in each case?
 
P

Paul

Well, I finally found it. One of the things I did during all this is run a
chkdsk. When I did it found index errors. I had seen the folders found.000
and found.001 but I've never seen anything useful in those folders before.
Well guess what? All of the stuff that is normally in Documents and
Settings was under that folder. I would have never thought it would be
there. I discovered this by adding Folder Size from Sourceforge so I could
see the sizes of folders.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.
 
P

Pegasus [MVP]

Paul said:
Well, I finally found it. One of the things I did during all this is run
a chkdsk. When I did it found index errors. I had seen the folders
found.000 and found.001 but I've never seen anything useful in those
folders before. Well guess what? All of the stuff that is normally in
Documents and Settings was under that folder. I would have never thought
it would be there. I discovered this by adding Folder Size from
Sourceforge so I could see the sizes of folders.

Thanks for taking the time to help me.

This is a first one for me too! Thanks for the feedback.
 

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