Lost Libraries

Ok this one has me a bit stumped. I have not done a lot of troubleshooting with Windows 7 in the past and the libraries are new, though I think I have them figured out. What happened to me is my Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit machine crashed when I went to install Firefox's new browser. Computer went to reboot and then came up with a Windows repair screen. It basically said Windows couldn't start and wanted to try to repair itself. Well I thought ok learning moment and let it go through the process. Well this computer is on a Windows 2003 SBS domain. When it "repaired" itself it had lost trust with the domain. I couldn't log onto the computer because of the trust issue and it wouldn't accept my generic local admin password. SO I used a software program and reset the local admin password, finally got onto the computer and rejoined to the domain. Well in the process I had to rename the computer to rejoin the domain and make the SBS stuff work. Well I log in now and figured I would copy my documents from the old profile and all to the new profile and be done with it...Kinda XP thinking. Well when I finally figured out where the path was all the folders from my old profile are empty...documents, pictures everything.... Any thoughts on where they might have went??

tomcatg said:

Well when I finally figured out where the path was all the folders from my old profile are empty...documents, pictures everything.... Any thoughts on where they might have went??

I'm sure the data is all still there.

It's a userid/permissions profile issue, where you can't get to the data under your old user's profile because you're now a new user profile.

Are you an "administrator"?

I actually don't know how to step-by-step solve your problem, but it's most certainly a permissions issue. My own feeling is that the old data is still there but is just not being presented to you by Explorer under your new profile simply because of a security and rights issue. I'm certain you've actually lost no data. You're just being prevented from accessing "somebody else's data".

Somebody else will hopefully chime in here and advise you more appropriately, for your SBS 2003 environment (which I know nothing about). It shouldn't be a big deal, if you have "administrator" authority to "take ownership" for folders, change permissions, etc.

Your SBS server is presumably your domain controller machine and when you renamed your local machine, the domain controller treats it as a totally seperate machine and your login on the domain changes from \\machine_a\xxx to \\machine_b\xxxx. This is why the domain doesn't letyou into the files as it treats you as a different person. Try loging in to your SBS server as Admin and copying your files stored under the machine_a user profile to your machine_b profile.

I am an admin on both the local machine and the domain. You are correct that the SBS is the domain controller. I can tell by the amount of space on the drive that the data is still there, just not able to find it. I may pull the drive and slave it into another machine and see if I can see the data that way..

tomcatg said:

I may pull the drive and slave it into another machine and see if I can see the data that way..

Not sure that will solve the problems... NTFS permissions and all.

I think you need to find the right sequence of "take ownership" and give "full control" permission to "Everyone" for these folders to be accessible.

You will need to sign into the SBS as Admin to see the files and copy them rather than sign into the local machine as admin.

Hey Wily, I'm not sure exactly what you mean when you say sign into the SBS as admin and copy the files. could you elaborate a little?

Your question is a little confusing. I had presumed you have a machine with windows 7 on it and a different machine running windows SBS, as is normally the case in a domain. If this is not the case please let me know exactly what you have and how you have it setup.

I can be pretty confusing at times wily, that is for sure

I have a small business server domain at my home, and I am a system admin for a large corporation so I have a good grasp on rights and permissions etc. You are correct that the Windows 7 workstation is a separate machine from the small business server. I just haven't worked a lot with Windows 7 libraries and that is what was throwing me a bit. In the XP world I would just rejoin the pc to the domain and look under documents and settings etc and copy the data to the new profile and be done with it. When I tried to do the same thing in Windows 7 I got into the different structure of the libraries and when I found the directory where the data should have been, it wasn't there. Well I have since slaved it into another machine and am running data recovery software. The software is seeing the files in the folder where I was looking but the OS was not able to see it. I don't know if something got corrupted or what at this point, but the data is sitting where I thought it was, but I just couldn't access it through Windows.