urgent help

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Some numpty has got him machine knackered with Viruses so he wiped the viruses out and cleaned the infected files however the machine wouldn't boot so someone told him to put his XP disc in and do a repair however the numpty has overwritten his existing copy of xp so when it boots he can see the files and documents that are on his PC but he can not open them or view them.

Any ideas?

 

he says no error messages come up just that when he click on the folder of the pictures or documents that it can't open them.

 

A big stick. Right between the eyes.


Whip out the hard-drive. Slap in a new one. Install XP fresh. Slave the old drive and pull off the files.

...THEN hit him with the big stick.

Qs

 

is there another way I can restore it to normal without doing this?

 

The files will be on the same partition, that's the problem.

Depending on the size of the volume you could shrink it (or use un-partitioned space), install XP on this and then pull the files off once inside the OS.

But otherwise....

Uh... linux CD from boot and manually copy the files off to USB?

There are a few choices.

Qs

 

Try what Jim said first.. might be able to replace ownership with his admin account.. otherwise do what Qs said.. (any method which suits you best)

 

will try all methods

 

if he had an account set up on his first install and not his second would making the second install account the same as the first sort it?

 

It may have overwritten the account information and you can't easily check. That's why I suggested my methods, because then it doesn't matter about permissions (you can either force them when inside a fresh XP install on another drive, or grab them using the linux boot cd).

Qs

 

the only problem is that I dont have this pc the guy wont give it to me to sort.

 

In which case he's boned (and stupid).

What he'll probably do is install XP over the top after formatting and lose all his data, and then more fool him.

Tell him that you can't sort it unless you have it with you. If you want to pre-emp it then install XP on a drive now (for use as a new master HDD).

Qs

 

I too, would try to change the ownership of one file or folder, see if it works and if it does just change the whole directory structure ownership.

 

Ah, I assumed that he couldn't boot.

Create a new administrator account and Claim Ownership of the files.

Copy them over to a USB drive (so he doesn't **** them up again), done.

If this doesn't work then the accounts are screwy due to the 'second' install. In which case use one of my other methods.

Qs

 

Yeah the SSID is different, it's what NT bases its NTFS permissions on.. so naming a user bob to try get access to (old) bob's documents won't work.. you'll have to either replace ownership with an admin account, or extract the files from either of Qs' methods

 

Pretty much what everyone else has said is true, boot into safe mode and look at changing permissions / Take ownership. Just had to do this the other day