ATTN: all computer geeks... (compliment, not an insult!)

[JJCRU23R]

Hello all,

My HP Pavilion f480a has pooped itself.

The 160gigs hard drive had less than 1gig of free space at the time it crashed and to fix it, I had to perform a restore which returned windows to the state it was in back when I first bought the pc, but thankfully it left all important work data, family photos intact.

Now.. Ive been trying to clean the hard drive up a bit by deleting stuff I really dont need and hope to copy the priceless family photos/videos onto dvd+r's.

However, since the restore, Ive had problems opening programs, deleting or even accessing some folders on my desktop which took up considerable diskspace. It appears as though although I am the "owner", i dont have authority to access the folder?!

Im updating windows xp as we speak.. but is there anyway I could possibly regain access to these blocked folders so I can delete them for good?

Any constructive info would be much appreciated..

Jase

[JJCRU23R]

hmm.. just realised ive got 83 updates to install for windows!

just deleted PKR, which now has created a total of 8 gigs free space!

[JJCRU23R]

just realised, microsoft office, photoshop, nero arent opening as expected. looks like I may have to reinstall all this stuff and I think Ive lost the disks... argh!

no nero = cant copy files onto dvd+r's.. any way to do this through windows xp software? looks as though itll only let me copy to cdr's.

as far as i know, ive never used or have had to use the admin/user/owner logins before.. atm im logged in as owner... not sure if i mentioned this earlier. any help guys would be appreciated in this matter.

Edited March 5, 2010 by mannyMANNYmanny

[ToyotaFreak]

Get a high capacity external hard disk (500 Gb or 1 TB) and back up your data onto it , much easier (Also useful if you have 2 more more computers.) and you don't have to burn multiple discs.

Also, try doing a disk clean up in your C Drive.

[DJKOR]

Whenever you do a re-install of Window$, you usually also have to re-install all your programs. Some programs can continue to work after Windows is re-installed, but sometimes don't function completely. The reason for this is because you have registry entries created in Windows that tie in with the program files.

As for accessing your 'locked' files, follow this procedure:

How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP

Also helps to make a partition of at least 15GB and have this as a Windows only partition in case such a thing happens again. Then install program files on the other partition so that way the system partition fails, you can format it and re-install and be fairly safe with having all your important stuff backed up on the second partition.

Also as suggested, get a larger drive. They are cheap as these days. I got a 1.5TB drive for like $140. Then you can turn your old drive into a system only drive.

[JJCRU23R]

Whenever you do a re-install of Window$, you usually also have to re-install all your programs. Some programs can continue to work after Windows is re-installed, but sometimes don't function completely. The reason for this is because you have registry entries created in Windows that tie in with the program files.

As for accessing your 'locked' files, follow this procedure:

How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP

Also helps to make a partition of at least 15GB and have this as a Windows only partition in case such a thing happens again. Then install program files on the other partition so that way the system partition fails, you can format it and re-install and be fairly safe with having all your important stuff backed up on the second partition.

Also as suggested, get a larger drive. They are cheap as these days. I got a 1.5TB drive for like $140. Then you can turn your old drive into a system only drive.

thanks for the link... the thing im worried bout is that im logged in as OWNER, and i dont recall ever creating a login/password for my pc as OWNER or ADMIN. .. any advice in case i try to login and it asks for a password?

Edit- i did have an 80gig external hd, but its gone missing.. me thinks one of my students have been looking in my bag.

Edited March 5, 2010 by mannyMANNYmanny

[VF-X]

The password for things you didnt even remember creating is like when you try to set up a PIN code on ur phone for 1st time...

It can be 000 or 12345 and such.. You can try but I never heard a case of having a password when the user never created one. Nero installer usually can be found through internet.. When u wanna move things, Can't you use USB or wireless so you can move things up through LAN?

Edited March 5, 2010 by VF-X

[JJCRU23R]

gday...

as far as i can see, you can only log in as OWNER.. I restarted the pc and since attempted to log out>switch user, but Owner was the only option.

any advice?

[DJKOR]

What happens is, when you have a user profile (lets say your username in this case is "Owner"), there is an option when creating that profile that makes your files private. When creating users, this can easily be selected without you noticing.

Then when you log in as another user, the files that were created under the user "Owner" can not be accessed. Even if you restore everything on another drive with the exact same username, you still won't be able to access these files. This is why there is that procedure listed my Microsoft to enable you to change ownership.

During this process, you will not need to have a password for the original account in which it was created. One of those security flaws of Windows.

[¥uri]

Heyy Jase,

If you do not recall setting a password, it could simply be set to, by default as followed:

password: password

[MT]

If you cant find your disk for Nero, get rid of it and download IMGBurn, does everything Nero does and much easy to use, and its free!

[JJCRU23R]

gday, just letting you know whats been going on - i havent had all that much time to sit at the desktop to try to resolve the problems Ive been having with the PC, however I have just completed installing SP3. I hadnt tried connecting my Iphone to the thing since itunes required installing, but after I did, the PC wouldnt recognise that Ive connected the iphone through my uSB! strange that...

Im 99% sure my wifes iphone would work no probs but ive yet to try it out. ive restarted and retried every step and still the Pc doesnt acknowledge the iphone or attempts to sync.