Possible recovery

Hi again Antionline, Long time no post, good to be back.
I searched through the forum lists and believe this is the most relevant for my issue ...

I haven't been to Antionline in awhile - a little over two years, and not just here but on my computer too. As you can imagine it was alittle groggy when I first booted it up and it got to the point where I had to do a PC recovery operation (using the manufacturers installed program from HP). I knew I would probably lose alot of my data and files but commenced regardless. She's working well now and when I was scanning it today I was watching the 'location scanned' area when I saw some of the names of supposedly lost files flash by - this is on windows XP home. It said they were in c:/documents and settings/my user name - after the scan I tried to go to this location but it said "location is not available access denied. This is a normal folder I should be able to access, is it not? How do I regain access to this folder? Why have I lost access? How do I recover these files that I saw being scanned with my AV but thought I had lost?

I know Im asking alot for being gone so long, but I know this is a helpful community lol
Thanks in advance!

Hi,

I presume you have tried to do it as administrator?

First thing you might try is to take ownership. There is a Microsoft article here that tells you how:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;308421

You will need to go into safe mode, right click etc................

Quote:

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Why have I lost access?

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I think that the HP recovery has caused this. It has allocated a new security ID (SID) to your user. Now, although you are using the same User ID and password, the new SID is different from the one that your files and folders were created under.

So you need to re-grant ownership to the user to transfer the new SID.

At least that is my guess, so please let us know how you get on :)

//Off topic but related:

This problem happens to people who have "upgraded" to Vista, but for a quite different reason. "Documents and Settings" is only a pointer for backwards compatibility, it is not a real folder. It is now called "Users" or something like that. That's where you will find the data ;)

Yo Nihil, you're the man of the hour!!
I managed to regain ownership and recover all the files I thought were lost.

Nice one, man. Thanx

Glad to hear that you were able to sort it out. :)

Hi IcSilk,

Thanks for the feedback. That is the most common cause and solution. I am surprised that recovery instructions don't give a clear warning as it must cost in terms of helpdesk calls :(

LOL, Nihil - and I knew (thought) that I would lose my info but decided I would suffer it to get my comp up and running again - it was all over 2 years old anyways!

But, like I said, I just happened to notice some of the file names flash by while I was doing an AV scan and decided to check it out - the rest is history. Thanx again