Totally confuddled, please can you advise??

[arlemon]

Hi Y'all

I'm new to this site as I have just purchased my first machine running windows 7. I am totally flummoxed with an issue I have - a really bad bad issue!!! I am pretty well practiced with computers as I work in new media.

So, I just bought a new pc to replace my dying vaio desktop. I needed to remove the secondary sata hdd from my old pc and put it in the new one. So far, so good. Its all installed and the new machine is registering it! WOOhOO!

My previous machine was running XPsp3.

So, everything is on the drive apart from the one important directory which holds all of my client work!!!! And I have not backed up for at leat a couple of months....oops...

...How is this possible? I can say for sure that I have never deleted this directory, and there is no virus on the drive!!!

Could it be something to do with windows 7? I have no idea and would appreciate any advice! I am trying to recover files now but so far, nothing has come up - and I KNOW the directory was here!!!

Thanks

 

[PooMan UK]

Was the directory under "my documents" on your XP machine ??

 

[zigzag3143]

Hi Y'all

I'm new to this site as I have just purchased my first machine running windows 7. I am totally flummoxed with an issue I have - a really bad bad issue!!! I am pretty well practiced with computers as I work in new media.

So, I just bought a new pc to replace my dying vaio desktop. I needed to remove the secondary sata hdd from my old pc and put it in the new one. So far, so good. Its all installed and the new machine is registering it! WOOhOO!

My previous machine was running XPsp3.

So, everything is on the drive apart from the one important directory which holds all of my client work!!!! And I have not backed up for at leat a couple of months....oops...

...How is this possible? I can say for sure that I have never deleted this directory, and there is no virus on the drive!!!

Could it be something to do with windows 7? I have no idea and would appreciate any advice! I am trying to recover files now but so far, nothing has come up - and I KNOW the directory was here!!!

Thanks

Not win 7 but you could try using a 3rd party app like recuva to find the missing files/folders.

Ken

 

[Barman58]

Hopefully this is a result of a permissions issue caused by the NTFS file system used by XP and Win7.

The access permissions are actually stored on the drive with the data and will survive an OS change.

Although you may have the same username on the xp and win7 installs the acual ID of the user will differ. This is an issue that has existed since NT days

You need to right click on the drive in explorer and take ownership of the drive
Properties - security - advanced - owner - set the owner to your username and let the system cascade the changes throughout the whole drive.

I would also manually add full control of the drive to your username due to the UAC system on win7.

You may see errors reported as the permissions are applied - note these and follow the same procedure for the individual folders, (do not worry about system folders as these are not required to be changed

Hope this helps

 

[fishnbanjo]

Is your system a dual boot system or is it Windows 7 seeing the drive from your Vaio? If it is the latter then I suggest placing you Windows 7 DVD in and booting from it and run Recover which will look for any OS MBR on your drives.

Once completed it will reboot and you will see 2 OS options on your screen, the first should be Windows for Windows 7, the second will be Older version of Windows (recovered) this will be XP SP3.

You do not need to boot into XP, just boot to Windows and if your folder/directory that you are trying to find is not there then reboot using the XP boot and see if it shows up.

 

[arlemon]

Was the directory under "my documents" on your XP machine ??

No...the drive was my D:/ ... just used for storing stuff. Every directory is on there, except for my client projects lol - typical! I also have a few locked directries on here which were not there b4:

2bf837e6840bea268c863a71
3be519146e2cfbe7b988902c
73c6bf6dd0158ceb02c64a46
cfb4e933cac87ebcbbadc8d6c70ed972
db723167103bcbbfa44ae10b

I getting quite worried!!!

Thanks

 

[arlemon]

Is your system a dual boot system or is it Windows 7 seeing the drive from your Vaio? If it is the latter then I suggest placing you Windows 7 DVD in and booting from it and run Recover which will look for any OS MBR on your drives.

Once completed it will reboot and you will see 2 OS options on your screen, the first should be Windows for Windows 7, the second will be Older version of Windows (recovered) this will be XP SP3.

You do not need to boot into XP, just boot to Windows and if your folder/directory that you are trying to find is not there then reboot using the XP boot and see if it shows up.

Hi
Th system I have is windows 7 only. It had space for another hdd - so i put the old drive in .... as far as i am aware, windows isnt on this - i just use it for storage

 

[arlemon]

Hopefully this is a result of a permissions issue caused by the NTFS file system used by XP and Win7.

The access permissions are actually stored on the drive with the data and will survive an OS change.

Although you may have the same username on the xp and win7 installs the acual ID of the user will differ. This is an issue that has existed since NT days

You need to right click on the drive in explorer and take ownership of the drive
Properties - security - advanced - owner - set the owner to your username and let the system cascade the changes throughout the whole drive.

I would also manually add full control of the drive to your username due to the UAC system on win7.

You may see errors reported as the permissions are applied - note these and follow the same procedure for the individual folders, (do not worry about system folders as these are not required to be changed

Hope this helps

Hi I have changed the permissions like u suggest but thing new has been found

 

[fishnbanjo]

Is there a chance what you want is on your old C: drive, I just now realized by what you posted this is/was your D: drive which I guess was your storage drive.

 

[Barman58]

Ok

To eliminate all possibility of permissions issues you could enable the Full system administrator account (the equivalent of the root user,on unix), this should allow you to see all folders

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/507-built-administrator-account-enable-disable.html

 

[arlemon]

Is there a chance what you want is on your old C: drive, I just now realized by what you posted this is/was your D: drive which I guess was your storage drive.

Definately on my D:/ . I'm so confused lol. I know I didnt delete it! Why would I delete a whole directory with my client files in it? lol I wouldnt I promise

 

[arlemon]

Ok

To eliminate all possibility of permissions issues you could enable the Full system administrator account (the equivalent of the root user,on unix), this should allow you to see all folders

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/507-built-administrator-account-enable-disable.html

Hi

I tried but it wont let me get to that - say i have home premium windows 7 and i must go thru control panel to manage user accounts

 

[Barman58]

Ok

In an elevated command prompt - (type "cmd" without quotes into the start search bar and right click the "cmd.exe" entry that appears, Select "run as administrator", and accept the UAC prompt) - in the command prompt box type "Net user administrator /active:yes" again without prompts and enter.

Log off and log back on as the Administrator account.

This should give full access to the D: drive

If you can see the missing folder then you can adjust the permissions to add control to your normal user

I would then advise you disable the Administrator account - As above but the command is "Net user administrator /active:no"

 

[mitchell65]

Have just read this thread and I see that you said your old PC was dying. If it hasn't yet given up the ghost could you not put the HD back in the old machine, confirm the folder is there and burn it to a disc, just a thought if all else fails!

 

[gregrocker]

Have just read this thread and I see that you said your old PC was dying. If it hasn't yet given up the ghost could you not put the HD back in the old machine, confirm the folder is there and burn it to a disc, just a thought if all else fails!

Mitchell's approach above is what I would do now, before doing anything else.

What is the problem with your old machine? Has the SATA HD been tested using maker's diag/repair full CD scan? Do this next after retrieving your data using old machine.

Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities (Storage) - TACKtech Corp.