Urgent! Cannot access an old protected folder in XP. Please help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Hello, I've got a serious problem. Not long time ago my old hard disk started
to fail and I had to install a new one and reinstall XP in it, creating new
user accounts.

The problem resides in a folder inside the Documents and Settings folder of
the old HD. I still can access the old HD, but it use to fail in few minutes
and get stuck, and this happens everytime I connect the old HD to the bus.

So, I had an old advanced user account protected with password and
containing inside its respective folder My Documents very important data of
one of my projects. This account disappeared along with the other older
accounts of XP installed in the older HD. Now I can't access this folder just
as if it still was bound to a user account with password protection. I can't
even access it from my administrator account, nor from a new account with
exactly the same name and password than the old one. I can't log into this
folder whatsoever.

The question is: what could I do to access these data? Please this is really
urgent, as I have to use those files as soon as possible, and to top it all I
don't find my backup CD, maybe it's lost. :-/

Please help! :-(
 
Hi,
I think I can help as I had a similar problem. Right click on the folder
you want to access. (I am assuming your XP user account had administrator
rights) Click on properties. Click the security tab. Your account name
should be listed there with the permissions set. I think you need to click
on the advanced button, the owner tab and change the ownership to yourself.
If there are several files in the folder you need to check the tickbox for
replace owner on subcontainers and objects. That should give you access to
this file. I think you can then set permissions for this folder but you
might not need to. Hope this helps.

Wendie
 
Thank you wendie for your help. However I can't see the Security tab when I
select the folder properties. Do you know why or what I have to do to fix
this?
 
Ok, I think it sounds like your old hard drive is Fat32 and not NTFS. Soooo,
you need to convert it to NTFS. Hmmmm. I think you can do this without
destroying the data. Try convert. exe in the command prompt. This will
convert the partition but retain all your files. You'll need some extra
space on the hard drive for this operation to work. Once it is converted,
you should then see the security tab and go from there. good luck.

Wendie
 
bg said:
Ok, I think it sounds like your old hard drive is Fat32 and not NTFS.
Soooo, you need to convert it to NTFS.
Click to expand...


I missed the beginning of this, and don't know what his problem is, but his
drive being FAT32 would not limit access to it, and he certainly doesn't
*need* to convert it to NYFS.

Hmmmm. I think you can do
this without destroying the data.
Click to expand...


Yes, but it's always prudent to first backup anything you can't afford to
lose. Although it's unlikely, things *can* go wrong.

Try convert. exe in the command
prompt. This will convert the partition but retain all your files.
Click to expand...


Yes. to convert to NTFS, you use the CONVERT command. But first read
http://www.aumha.org/a/ntfscvt.htm because there's an issue regarding
cluster size that isn't obvious.
 
Back
Top