Wrong Permissions of C Drive

[RajKohli]

My friend is in a serious trouble. Long story short, a few days before my
friend asked me to protect his one drive from unauthroized access as he was
giving his laptop to one of his friend for some kind of project work.

Yesterday, he came to me with laptop and where Windows XP was not getting
started. The error was "unmountable_boot_volume". I google on the same error
and found that the boot partition is got corruptted. He was lucky because his
data was on last drive i.e. E Drive. His hard disk was partitioned in 3
drives C,D, and E and all the stuff was on E drive which was being protected
by me removing all the users and groups from the Security tab.

He told me to reinstall Windows if the chances are less to recover the old
windows. Here the things starting messing up. Now, what happened is, when the
setup start what I notice is that all drive letter has changed. His E Drive
became C, D became E
and C became D by unknown reasons.

The problem is, if I try to install Windows on either the current D or E
drive it doesn't let me. In the end of file copy progress it stuck on NTLDR
and NTDETECT.com. Not because of bad CD or anything else. It is because of
the setup wants to write both files to C drive but the permissions are set to
None for each and every group.

Today, I was googling to know that how I can change the permissions. I tried
BARTPE to no avail. I tried CACLS and SUBINACL but no use. Maybe this is
because I don't know how to use the both commands properly. In BartPE Total
Commander it shows every drive contents except C drive. When I click on C
Drive it says "Drive not found" please choose another. Could be because of
Permissions.

The biggest problem is that it is a LAPTOP and I can't remove its hard disk
to plugin with another running PC. I also tried using BARTPE to create a
bootable USB PEN Drive. Everything works fine but when I try to boot from USB
Drive it says NTLDR
missing even it is there and being copied properly.

First thing, I would like to know is that what are default permissions on a
newly formatted NTFS partition within the Windows XP Setup? Secondly, can I
change the current permissions and ownership through CACLS and SUBINACL?

Can I change the C Drive Letter to something else and make another as C
Drive Active Partition? Which partition utility can help in this? Will
Partition Magic or any other utility will work because of Permission?

Let me make it more clear to you that the only problem is that the Windows
XP Setup is unable to copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM on C Drive just because of
permission. None group or user have any kind of control on that drive.

If something can be done through CACLS or SUBINACL then kindly write me the
complete command to take Ownership and Full Control on C Drive including all
Sub-Folders.

A quick response will highly be appreciated.

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OF YOU!!!

 

[John John]

Change the active partition flag, make the usable partition active and
then do a parallel installation of Windows on the newly made active
partition. To avoid further mistakes install Windows in a differently
named folder, like WINFIX for example. Then, from the new parallel
installation you can add "Everyone" and "System" to the permissions on
the other drives. After you reset the permissions you can toggle the
Active partition flag to the desired partition and attempt a Repair
Install on the original Windows installation. You can change the Active
Partition with Windows 98 setup disk & FDISK or with third party tools
like BootItNG.

John

 

[Patrick Keenan]

My friend is in a serious trouble. Long story short, a few days before my
friend asked me to protect his one drive from unauthroized access as he
was
giving his laptop to one of his friend for some kind of project work.

Yesterday, he came to me with laptop and where Windows XP was not getting
started. The error was "unmountable_boot_volume". I google on the same
error
and found that the boot partition is got corruptted. He was lucky because
his
data was on last drive i.e. E Drive. His hard disk was partitioned in 3
drives C,D, and E and all the stuff was on E drive which was being
protected
by me removing all the users and groups from the Security tab.

He told me to reinstall Windows if the chances are less to recover the old
windows. Here the things starting messing up. Now, what happened is, when
the
setup start what I notice is that all drive letter has changed. His E
Drive
became C, D became E
and C became D by unknown reasons.

The problem is, if I try to install Windows on either the current D or E
drive it doesn't let me. In the end of file copy progress it stuck on
NTLDR
and NTDETECT.com. Not because of bad CD or anything else. It is because of
the setup wants to write both files to C drive but the permissions are set
to
None for each and every group.

Today, I was googling to know that how I can change the permissions. I
tried
BARTPE to no avail. I tried CACLS and SUBINACL but no use. Maybe this is
because I don't know how to use the both commands properly. In BartPE
Total
Commander it shows every drive contents except C drive. When I click on C
Drive it says "Drive not found" please choose another. Could be because of
Permissions.

The biggest problem is that it is a LAPTOP and I can't remove its hard
disk
to plugin with another running PC.

Of course you can. You just need a $20 USB2 notebook drive case or
adapter. Note that you must get the correct type, IDE or SATA.
You will usually also need a Phillips screwdriver.
You can gain full access to the drive in a few minutes this way, starting
from picking up the screwdriver.

Note that laptop drive cases come with a 3-headed cable, because the power
draw is too great for a single USB port. Use two separate ports on the
host system, and plug those in *before* attaching the drive at the other
end. Otherwise, you will overload the port and that can be a little
awkward to reset.

You might consider just backing up all the data from all the partitions -
the Acronis TrueImage free trial version is very handy for this - and then
just wiping the drive and starting over from a bare disk.

This might well be faster and cleaner than all the gyrations you're going
through now.

HTH
-pk

 

[RajKohli]

A MILLIONS thanks for your help.

Fdisk does the trick. I was scratching my head from last 2 days to resolve
the problem. I did everything except using the old days DOS utilities.

Even the hard disk was not being recognized properly by FDisk because of its
large 120GB capacity but I deleted the both D and E drive and recreated a new
small 5 GB partition and activate it and surprizingly fdisk assign it as C
drive and that does the trick. I installed Windows XP, changed the
permissions and then reinstall Windows XP and recreated the partitions
accordingly. Even the Partition Magic was not recognizing the partitions
properly.

Once again, I would like to thank you for your help and time. It saved a
precious amount of Data. You can say 3 to 5 years hard-work of someone.

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR TO YOU.

With Regards.

Rajiv Kohli

 

[John John]

You're welcome, glad to see that you got it fixed. Merry Christmas and
happy New Year to you too.

John