[Irate Dog]

Hey all!

I shut down my homebuilt computer running XP Pro after having run MS Defender and the disk cleaner. The next day, I turned the computer back on and everything seemed fine… CMOS did its thing, Windows started to load the XP window….then, the entire computer RE-BOOTED – and kept re-booting (after reaching the same spot each time) until I shut the computer down with the off button.

I restarted and the same thing happened, so I put a Windows XP Pro CD, booted to safe mode and tried to do a recovery. Nothing.

I shut down again, restarted and tried to do a repair. This got me a black screen with the mouse cursor arrow, but nothing else after that. I’ve tried this several times. Still nothing.

I’ve tried slaving the old drive into a new one, just to see if I could retrieve some music and picture files, and, although I can see the folders, access to them is denied.

Anyone got any thoughts or suggestions on how to retrieve these files from this old hard drive?

Appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.

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Hello Irate Dog,
It sounds like the drive died.
From my experiance when a drive has failed it is expensive to have a data recovery co. retrieve your data.
I always preach, back up back up back up.
You can try some of the data recovery software that is for sell, but I believe that it is a waste of money.
You will need to replace the drive, and reinstall XP.
Please make back ups of your data from now on.

[hfcg]

Hello Irate Dog,
It sounds like the drive died.
From my experiance when a drive has failed it is expensive to have a data recovery co. retrieve your data.
I always preach, back up back up back up.
You can try some of the data recovery software that is for sell, but I believe that it is a waste of money.
You will need to replace the drive, and reinstall XP.
Please make back ups of your data from now on.

[The Skeptic]

In recovery console type chkdsk /r and let the process run to the end.

[Irate Dog]

Hello hfcg,
I thought so too, but when I slaved it to a new drive, it seemed to work, even though I was unable to retrieve the files I wanted. (The files were protected on that drive with an adminstrator password -something I forgot to mention earlier.)

I thought about using Norton Ghost to see if I could clone the data, but as I understand it, this would only clone the files "access denied".

Thanks anyway.

[Irate Dog]

Skeptic:

Are you saying to reinstall the old hard drive as a master? Or can I run the recovery console on a slave drive from the new master?

[The Skeptic]

You can run check disk with the affected disk connected to the other computer. Open My Computer > right-click the affected disk > properties > tools > error checking > check now. Check the two boxes and click Start.

[Irate Dog]

Skeptic -

Ran chkdsk on the old drive per your instructions............everything checked out "OK", but I'm still denied access to folders.

Any other ideas?

[John Hook]

Irate Dog,

When you say you're being denied access to folders - it sounds like an NTFS permission issue. When you mount an NTFS volume under Windows NT/200/XP/etc, you need to be logged into an account that has permissions to access these files/folders. Perhaps you're not logging in as an Administrator or account that has been designated with Administrator access.

Are you booting from the same drive where Windows was installed or have you attached a different drive as a slave and are trying to access it under a NEW or DIFFERENT installation of Windows? Provide some more details and we'll probably be able to help you gain access to the files on this drive.

- John Hook

[Ztruker]

You need to take ownership of the drive/folder/file. See here: How to take ownership of folders and files

[The Skeptic]

In your first post you mentioned that you can boot in safe mode. What happens then when you try to open a file. Could you write down the exact text of the error message?

If your goal is to retrieve data and take care of the operating system latter you can use one of a number of free, data recovery programs such as Smart Recovery for Pictures, PCI File recovery, nt file recovery.