Stuck in a loophole; Locked myself out of C:\

richc46 · 14 Jan 2010

The reapir install will just overwrite your files. You do not lose document, programs or anything else.

iseeuu · 14 Jan 2010

5674 said:

Is there no other alternative?

I am grateful for you trying to help regardless.

I would think a "Repair Install" would get you back up and running without deleting everything and starting over.

Repair Install

Perhaps not a very good analogy, but sort of: think of buying food at a fast food joint. You only see the kid at the cash register, but behind the wall are all sorts of people doing different jobs so that the kid can put your food on a tray and pass it to you. What you have done is dismiss all the people behind the wall and now can't get your order filled?

Cheers!
Robert

surfasb · 14 Jan 2010

5674 said:

Considering that i only have one account set as the administrator account I would not have assumed 4 different variants of the same account with varied policies would be necessary, If I'm the only user of this computer then i don't require an extra profile that has exactly the same permissions as the admin account, at least that is what i would naturally expect.

You incorrectly assume that the amount of entries in the NTFS ACL has any kind of relevance to the number of local accounts on a machine.

I really don't want to have to format my OS partition, Would it be possable to create another administrator account and through that grant my current "broken" account full control? Or am i just talking wishful thinking.

Also, i still get the same error message using your method.

Creating another admin account won't do any good. Those same files that are locked by the OS are going to be locked whether you are using a user account, power user account, backup operator account, Enterprise Admin, or Domain admin account. It is all the same to the OS.

You can try to obtain a good copy of Windows PE on a bootCD and modify all the NTFS ACLs from there. That's another solution. But I again suggest you thing about backing up your data using a linux LiveCD.

acurasd · 14 Jan 2010

5674 said:

Is there no other alternative?

I am grateful for you trying to help regardless.

lets see if we can access your C drive by going into the true admin account

go to CMD run as Admin

type: net user administrator /active:yes

Log off user and the Admin will show up in the welcome boot.

Not saying this is a fix but worth a try

Frostmourne · 14 Jan 2010

acurasd said:

5674 said:

Is there no other alternative?

I am grateful for you trying to help regardless.

lets see if we can access your C drive by going into the true admin account

go to CMD run as Admin

type: net user administrator /active:yes

Log off user and the Admin will show up in the welcome boot.

Not saying this is a fix but worth a try

Isn't that the SYSTEM account that was killed? A repair install would be good here.

surfasb · 14 Jan 2010

Frostmourne said:

acurasd said:

5674 said:

Is there no other alternative?

I am grateful for you trying to help regardless.

lets see if we can access your C drive by going into the true admin account

go to CMD run as Admin

type: net user administrator /active:yes

Log off user and the Admin will show up in the welcome boot.

Not saying this is a fix but worth a try

Isn't that the SYSTEM account that was killed? A repair install would be good here.

Nope. Again, the list of entries in the NTFS ACL has NO, I repeat NO, correlation with the actual local accounts on a machine.

Even going under the true admin account will do him little good here. While you can seize control of the object and start to add in the default entries, it will do you no good as you will have no access to the files that are locked by the OS.

Again, you should think about backing up your data and reinstalling Windows because lots of the changes are irreversible with your current tools.

If you can get a hold of a WInPE disc...

Saltgrass · 14 Jan 2010

The solution suggested by richc46 is very easy and will not erase any data.

I am not in Win 7 right now, but how did you delete System? Did you delete it from the security tab for the C: partition and maybe that is why you cannot access it? Can you go back and add the System and fix it?

You say you can access the partition using a shortcut. It almost sounds like you mapped it.

PoPPeR · 14 Jan 2010

you mentioned you were able to access a certain from the folder's shortcut. go to the top hiearchy of that folder and check you have permission to it.

agree...do a repair if all else fail.

14 Jan 2010

Good news, i mannaged to fix the problem without having to do a repair install.

Remember those 4 user names that i mentioned earlier? I changed my C:/'s ownership to those specific names, the other two present would not let me grant them total access to the drive and would produce errors, luckily the system picked up the two deleted accounts up as legitimate users still on the system and then realised that it's functional to give those accounts ownership of the drive.

The names of the accounts werent avaliable by default, i had to find the names to grant access to, should've thought of that sooner, I thought that since i deleted them they woulden't still be recoverable.

Long story short no drastic measures were required and i luckily got out of what would otherwise be a total dead end.

Also reinstalling windows 7 woulden't be that much of a problem anyway, i have the OS itself stored on a 30gig partition, all my important files run on secondary drives.

Thanks guys

MacGyvr · 14 Jan 2010

richc46 said:

Easy to fix Just do this several times if errors are found

Go to your ADmistrator account. Type CMD in search. Then right click on cmd, to install as ADM. Then in cmd type sfc /scannow. This will find and fix corruption. If that does not work, there is another way. dont worry this is an easy problem.

How is searching for corrupted files going to fix permissions that the user purposely deleted? The system is not corrupt. It is doing as it was told to do.