RE: HD Detection

Tech-Archive recommends: Speed Up your PC by fixing your registry

From: Peter (anonymous_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 03/26/04


Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 09:56:05 -0800

Hi,

Michael Solomon MS-MVP Wrote:

If you are able to boot as you say but are not able to access some files it
might be a file ownership issue.
Note, file ownership and permissions supersede administrator rights. How
you resolve it depends upon which version of XP you are running.

***********XP-Home************

Unfortunately, XP Home using NTFS is essentially hard wired for "Simple File
Sharing" at system level.

However, you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. Reboot, and start
hitting F8, a menu should eventually appear and one of the
options is Safe Mode. Select it. Note, it will ask for the administrator's
password. This is not your administrator account, rather it is the
machine's administrator account for which users are asked to create a
password during setup.

If you created no such password, when requested, leave blank and press
enter.

Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll to
the bottom of the list, if it shows "Enable Simple File Sharing" deselect it
and click apply and ok. If it shows nothing or won't let you make a change,
move on to the next step.

Navigate to the files, right click, select properties, go to the Security
tab, click advanced, go to the Owner tab and select the user that was logged
on when you were refused permission to access the files. Click apply and
ok. Close the properties box, reopen it, click add and type in the name of
the user you just enabled. If you wish to set ownership for everything in
the folder, at the bottom of the Owner tab is the following selection:
"Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," select it as well.

Once complete, you should be able to do what you wish with these files when
you log back on as that user.

**********XP-Pro*************

If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account to
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folder
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is not
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok.

If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user,
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, click
Advanced, go to the Owner tab,
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, you
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,"
place a check in the box and click apply and ok.

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in the
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again,
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and be
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type the
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessary
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click apply
and ok.

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder even
in a limited account.

After you have successfully gained access to the all the data files of your old Hdd, copy all the files to the C drive and then you can re-format the slave drive.

Hope it helps.

Peter

     
     ----- Hans wrote: -----
     
     I don't know how to describe this perfectly... I'll do my
     best in explaining, please bear with me.
     
     I have 2 hard drives, a primary and a slave one of
     course. For some reason this morning, the primary was
     turned from drive C to drive G; the slave was turned from
     drive D to drive H.
     
     What I did was to disconnect all drives except for the
     primary drive and booted the system. But I wasn't able to
     boot anymore, I can however view the files via systems
     recovery of the windows xp cd.
     
     So what I did was to change the jumpers of both primary
     and slave drives to make my old drive C a drive D and vice
     versa. Then I installed a fresh windows xp on the new
     drive C, it worked smoothly.
     
     Afterwards, I connected my old drive C with the intention
     of converting it into drive D. Windows has detected the
     drive yet there's no drive D icon. But according to the
     device manager, the drive is working perfectly. I also
     used administrative tools to check the drive,
     it's "online" and identified as "basic" and "active". It
     even stated I have 74% free (I didn't reformat the drive).
     
     Despite its proof of presence in my pc, no drive letter
     was assigned to it. I was trying to assign one with the
     said tool but upon right-clicking, the only "clickable"
     option is delete partition and help!
     
     Getting desperate, I tried rebooting and load the windows
     xp pro cd again. Hoping to have another shot at the
     systems recovery to regain my documents. Funny thing is I
     was able to access it through SR and the drive was
     assigned as drive D. I can view the files yet can't copy
     the content of documents and settings because access is
     denied (in spite of my administrator privilege of my OWN
     pc grrr). In the SR environment, I can only
     add/delete/view files within the root directory of drive D
     and the old windows directory. I also tried safe mode
     hoping I can access my files.
     
     Please, can someone help me how I can assign a drive
     letter? Or how can I access my files? I'm really
     desperate and don't want to reformat it soon until all
     possibilities have been tried.
     
     Any help and suggestion is appreciated, thanks!
     



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