Hi - I have WinXP Home with NTFS formatted partitions, and my My Documents folder I has password locked to prevent other snooping (kids) from rummaging into it. Then, after many months of happy use, I had a rather extreme WinXP crash such that no way would it boot to anywhere, not even safe boot, or system recovery would work. I had three partitions. Windows on C:\ and apps on D:\ and my My documents folder on D:\ along with other essential stuff. With good forsite I had always backed up the contents of the My Documents, so I've not lost the contents. To get around my system glitch I formatted the C:\ and D:\ drives, and reinstalled as usual. Now I can't get into the My Documents folder. It won't accept my usual password and has totally locked me out, even with me logged on as administrator. Does anyone know a way for me to get around this problem please?
You need to log as administrator under safe mode and then change the folder permissions to give you access. It was a while ago when i had the same problem, but I can't remember exactly how I did it, so sorry for being a bit vague. I'm sure someone from this NG can shed more light on this, otherwise try a Win XP newsgroup Simon
Bryan Bellis wrote: snip see "Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP"; http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421 Lee
That's the right answer. If you'd used XP Pro, and the Encrypted File System (EFS) then =nothing= will get you back in, unless you have exported/saved a copy of the encryption certificates. Win XP security is based on unique Security ID ('SID') which is generated when user IDs are created .. and they really are unique - adding a new user with the same name/password doesn't get you the same SID, or the same access rights, as one which was deleted.
that's the one; brilliant. Thanks Lee. -- Bryan Bellis. Don't hit REPLY to email me, my spam trap will kill it. Use the link below instead please. To email me, go to this web page link: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bryan.bellis/antispam.htm
