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A reinstall and file permissions

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7 replies

by synthpunk

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Well.. this one has me worried. I've got about 6 gigs worth of important data in my My Docs folder, and last night after a reboot my XP installationd decided it didn't like booting any more. So I booted off an ERD 2k recovery cd-rom and moved the folder to another name, then reinstalled XP. Now I can't get to my files! They're there, but I get Access Denied. The user had administrator priveledges (I believe) and I am trying to manipulate them logged in as a normal user but in the administrative group (does that mean the user has the same administrator powers?) help please! i gotta get my files back.. how do I gain access to them?
I already tried to xcopy a folder or two off of my recovery cd, and the data is intact but I don't trust this xcopy executable to copy -every- file.

7 replies

by beermonster

Hi,
There's a tool in the win2k reskit that deals with exactly this situation. It's called takeown.exe

It allows you to take ownership of the folder \ files, after which you can use cacls.exe to change the permissions to give you full access. Let me know if you want a copy of takeown -

darthurs@hotmail.com

Hope this helps...

by rich

All you need do when using XP is:-

Make sure your an administrator

Right click the folder, select "properties", then select the "security" tab. Now click "Advanced" at the bottom of the dialog box. Remove the tick from the inherit permissions from parent if ticked.

Now click the "Owner" tab at top of screen, and naviage in this screen to take ownership. Remember to select for all sub files and folders to also be included.

Hope this works, it's worked for me when moving NTFS formatted hard drives from one PC to another.

:)

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