[dsenette]

jkmira - i'm not giving up on y ou yet...but i'm not gonna beat around the bush..you're not in a very good place right now with this machine...and there is a VERY large chance that you aren't going to be able to (at least easily and cheaply) get your data back off of the drive....normally with an inaccessable drive...at this point i'd have you try to load t he drive up in another comoputer as a slave and copy off all your important data...but i'm almost 100% sure...that the drive would still be locked.....so..pe patient with us as we need to think of a way around this...or we need to be lucky enough to come across a similar situation through research (which i haven't found yet...still looking)....

wannabe1 - what are your thoughts on the UBCD for this...i know we'd PROBABLY be able to get the data off...but do you think it would be able to run the prog for the lock from with in the UBCD?...or maybe the unlinstaller? though maybe that would leave the lock intact?

[Advertisements]

I haven't been able to find any information on how this application works to hide the files. Is it a compression agent? Does it encrypt the files to make them invisible? OR does is use Windows to simply lock the files and folders?

Without knowing just how this thing works, it's gonna be pretty tough to undo it. Uninstalling it using the UBCD will, in all likelyhood, leave the drive locked...or hidden...or whatever it did to the drive. It would be worth a try, though...if only to try to recover the files.

One other thing we might try first, is to just try to unlock the drive using the startup disk and the DOS command unlock c: from the A:\ prompt.

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

I haven't been able to find any information on how this application works to hide the files. Is it a compression agent? Does it encrypt the files to make them invisible? OR does is use Windows to simply lock the files and folders?

Without knowing just how this thing works, it's gonna be pretty tough to undo it. Uninstalling it using the UBCD will, in all likelyhood, leave the drive locked...or hidden...or whatever it did to the drive. It would be worth a try, though...if only to try to recover the files.

One other thing we might try first, is to just try to unlock the drive using the startup disk and the DOS command unlock c: from the A:\ prompt.

wannabe1

[dsenette]

i wonder if, from within the ubcd, you would be able to actually run the software itself and use it to unlock the drive....(i wish i had a peice of poop machine to test this on...THOUGH...i COULD just hide ANY folder on my machine and test it on unlocking the single folder....hmmmm....TESTING!!

[dsenette]

ok...just tested it....it marks the folder as a HIDEN folder within the windows api...and set's a redirect to the control panel..you can simply unclick the hiden atribute to make it visible (or just do the show hiden files)...but it doesn't change the redirect...i'm gonna see if i can locate the redirect and also see if i can run the actual program from the ubcd

[dsenette]

don't have my bootable UBCD here at work so i can't test outside of the windows API BUT while running the ubcd image from w ithin windows i can see the hidden folder and all of it's TRUE contents...i can copy files OUT of the folder so we may be able to save data...i cannot however..open files WITHIN the drive...so i put the exe for the PROG inside of the folder before i locked it...and i CANNOT run the program from within the locked folder...i can however copy the EXE out of the folder into another folder and run it from there....the weirdest thing...is that if i run the program from within the folder i want to lock...it will not truly lock it...it just hide's it....though i haven't tried to lock..then restart...from within the folder...so i don't know how you've gotten into this mess...because it looks like it doesn't want to let y ou do it...weird..still researching

[dsenette]

update on testing...with t he program i cannot under any circumstances get the software to lock an entire partition...it will only lock and hide individual files and folders...

what the heck did you hide? did you do a select all or something? i can't even figure out how you locked the drive...unless you locked just the windows folder...this isn't making sense anymore

[jkmira]

Basically I highlighted the c drive insted of the folder and it hid the hole folder if you were testing it the program name is secrecy file & folder hider 2.1 I think I got it from cnet downloads

[dsenette]

i've got that program indeed...and i can't get it to hide a full drive...though...on checking the version..i've got 2.1.0.0...hmm..

[jkmira]

well I think it was on the left when you choose the file or folder to hide I accidentally highlighted c:\ and hit enter insted of the file in the c:\ drive

[dsenette]

BREAKTHROUGH!!!!!!!!!....the tool HIDE's the folder by setting the hidden attribute (and the read only attribute)....but it LOCKS it by changing the extension on the folder to .{clsidnumberofcontrolpanel}....so if we can get into the file system....we can rename whatever folder's are locked using explorerxp from the UBCD....VERY easy program to get around.....once we change the name...we'll undo the read only and hidden attributes and all will be back to normal..

[jkmira]

ok well seeing as how my compter literacy is very limited I'll just say great how do we do that

[dsenette]

we'll jump that bridge when we come to it...let me know when you're done dling and burning

[jkmira]

how large is the file I'm at 11.7 mb so far

[dsenette]

um....REALLY big...350 MB

[jkmira]

well I'll be here awhile.