Data Recovery Help

Hi all,

Here's my sad tale of woe :(

I tried to start my computer yesterday, but instead of the Windows XP logo I got a blank screen that displayed a message about a missing or corrupt "hal.dll" file. Needless to say, I could no longer boot my computer.

Note that this was not a new XP installation. I had been happily using this installation for over a year (I was running XP Pro with Service Pack 2), & had not recently insalled any new hardware/software).

To cut a long story short, I tried to fix the problem by booting up from the Windows XP CD & then using the Recovery Console (RC). The RC however, could not read any of the data on the hard drive (the 'DIR' & 'CD' commands didn't work etc). Consequently, I realised that the problem was far more serious than a damaged "hal.dll" or "boot.ini" file (as some have suggested to be a possible cause of the problem).

I then removed the hard drive & installed it as a slave drive in another computer (which was also running Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 2), to see if the second computer could read any of the data on the currupt disk.

The 2nd computer automatically ran CHKDSK against the newly-installed disk and was able to find & repair many, many errors. Following this, the second computer recognised the corrupt disk as drive "E" & was able to read the data on it. However, here is my problem:

Most of the data I am interested in recovering is in the Administrator account on the corrupt disk. When I try to access the folder that contains this data (ie: "E:\Documents And Settings\David"), I get an "Access Denied" message. Obviously, the 2nd computer is recognising that this folder contains privileged data & is honouring the original access control restrictions.

Does anybody know how I can access the data in this folder?

By the way, I replaced the (missing) "hal.dll" file after CHKDSK had performed its running repairs, returned the hard drive to its own computer & tried booting again. This time I got a message about a missing or corrupt "system32\config\system" file. When I fixed that, I got a message about a different file. In other words, the disk is no longer bootable, & I will have to reinstall Windows from scratch.

I cannot reinstall, though, until I have recovered the data from the Administrator account (I assume that at least some of this data is recoverable, but I won't know until I can access the folder & see what's there).

Once again, I would greatly appreciate any help offered :)

Muchos Gracias,
Craig.

PS: In case you're wondering, yes I tried FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, booting from a boot disk etc, even though I knew none of these would work.
.

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