Re: How do I Transfer Data files from Old Accounts?
- From: Richard <rng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:57:23 -0800
On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 08:11:19 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
<kblake@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 17 Nov 2007 19:48:23 -0800, Richard <rng@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I have a 4 year old computer which came with Windows XP Home Edition.
Lately, it had become unstable (re-booting frequently for no reason) and very
slow (click Start, wait 2 seconds, click Shutdown, wait 4 seconds). So I copied
all of the data files, including a LOT of music files, to another computer on my
LAN. Then I re-installed Windows XP.
Judging from the still almost full hard drive, the old files are still on the
drive. In "C:\Documents and Settings\" I can see the folder for my old account.
But I cannot access this folder from my new account, even though at the Windows
login screen it says Administrator under my name.
Exactly how did you "reinstall" Windows? It sounds like you did it
improperly and may have done a "repair installation" (a name which
confuses people, in my view; I think it should simply be called a
"repair) or, more likely, you installed a second copy in parallel, and
now have two installations.
I wanted to do a complete factory reinstall, either via a reload disk or a
hidden partition. Unfortunately, Dell had not implemented that feature by the
time the computer was manufactured. All we got was a bunch of program CDROMs.
Faced with a program-by-program reinstall, I decided to start with Windows.
I put the Win XP install disk into the CDROM drive, and booted off the CDROM
drive. I saw an option for repair, and chose that. Part way through that
process, it asked for a driver file (I can't remember which), which I was able
to find on another CDROM. Then it asked for another driver file. At this
point, I got exasperated, shut down the computer using the on/off switch, booted
off the CDROM again, and told it to do a fresh install of Windows.
How would I tell if I had 2 installations in parallel?
Before I started this process, the computer only had about 2 GB free space on
the hard disk (LOTS of music files). It still has about 2 GB left, so I don't
see how I could have fitted a parallel Windows installation onto the disk.
By the way, I think reinstalling in situations like this is generally
poor practice, for a bunch of reasons. I'll mention just two:
1. You never found out what was wrong, and if the problems were caused
by something you did (which is often likely) you will likely repeat
the same behavior and quickly find yourself back in the situation you
started in.
2. Spontaneous rebooting is often a hardware problem, not a Windows
one. If that's the case for you, reinstalling does nothing to solve
the problem.
My thought was: Freshly install the software, and see if the computer runs OK.
If not, try to find the hardware problem.
We did have one anomaly last night. The wife was burning a music CDROM. She
was just sitting there watching the burning progress, when the computer changed
to the Switch User screen. She logged in as herself again, and the CDROM
burning process was still running and finished normally.
Previously, during spontaneous re-boots, Dell's splash screen was displayed as
the computer did a Power On Self Test, and all work was lost.
.
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