Help urgently needed! Windows not booting

Hello everyone,

Yesterday, when I turned on my computer, Windows XP did not boot up! It

just showed the Dell logo (I have a Dell Desktop) and then it went to

black as it usually does before showing the Widows XP logo. But after

that nothing else appeared. It just stayed black and the computer's

hard-drive acticity light went nuts, but the screen stayed black until

I was forced to reboot.
Then I proceeded to use my Windows Reinstallation CD and upgrade

Windows XP hoping that it would fix the problem without having to

re-format the hard-drive. But after it installed some files, it

re-booted to start the actual re-installation of windows, but again

nothing showed up after the black screen. I also fixed the boot sector

and the master boot record with the windows re-installation cd, but it

didn't help at all.
At this point I said to myself "screw it, I'll just install Windows XP

on my second HDD and attempt to recover the files on my master HDD once

I get XP running on my second HDD," but to my suprise once I got XP

running on my second HDD and went to My Documents in my C drive (C is

my primary HDD, the one that doesn't boot) but I was greeted with the

following message:

C:\Documents and Settings\Owner is not accessible
Access is denied

Owner is that name of my account where I keep all my school files,

personal photos, music, and an endless quantity of important personal

information that I would really don't want to lose. I don't really care

if I have to format my C drive as long as I can recuperate this

valuable data. So, I basically either would like to recuperate my data

in the My Documents folder (owner) or be able to boot again into

Windows on my C drive.

I was thinking that perhaps I could install Linux and try to access my

files from there. What do you think? Does anyone have any suggesstions?

Any help or advise would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot for reading (and hopefully helping).....

Hi, it sounds like an authority problem the SID file on your second drive is different from the one on C:/

Try loging in with your main Administrator account, then go to your C:\ drive and take ownership of the file.

Reboot, then you should be able to get into the file as Administrator.

Good luck

Thanks for your reply nihil.

But how do I take ownership of the files?

Right Click the file
Security
Advanced
Owner

HTHs

MLF

Learn from this mistake you made

:)

Click the smiley for more.

you could try booting up PC with a live linux distro (like knoppix) moving al files onto 2nd HD that you wish to keep and then format reinstall windows

v_Ln

If you have difficulty:

Open the Windows Help & Support Center

Type file ownership into the search box, then select the take ownership of a file or folder option that appears in the "pick a task" list.

You may have to disable the simple file sharing option to get the <security> tab to display. There are instructions on how to do that as well.

:)

Thanks for your help guys, they've certainly oriented me a lot.

Ok, I just unlocked the My Documents folder. However everything inside the folder is locked, and the thing is I have over 500 files and 20 folders inside the My Documents folders, which would mean that I have to remove the restriction on everyfile and folder manually. Isn't there a better way to accomplish this?

In short : No .........

Just R click on the 'my document' folder.
go to properties.
then to 'security'.
you should get a 'ping' and a message that you cannot do blah blah blah.

hit the 'advanced' button.
now, 'ownership' [might be different button, but the meaning is obvious]
it should open a window wherein there is an admin symbol.
click on, and also check the box at the bottom to allow the owner to take all files down from there.

click the OK.

Repeat till done or bored.............
Sorry that I don't know the short cuts.

Hmmm,

If you go into the main folder, and "security" you click the "advanced" radio button at the bottom and go into permissions.

Check the box to replace all the child permissions with the parent ones.

It might be an idea to then re-boot before having another try.

I am pretty sure that you can set the top level permissions and get them to be inherited by the "children"

In case you haven't noticed, I have not done anything like this since Win NT4 :D

Good luck!