Need help recovering files from Windows change

[lee42048]

Hi,

I am trying to help a friend whose motherboard died. She bought a new computer and I have the old hard drive and I am trying to recover her files for her. Her new Dell does not have the facilities to connect another hard drive which sucks. I am buying a SATA power cord adapter to fix that.

At first when I tried to copy My Documents (plus a few others) I got the message; my documents not accessible access denied. I thought I figured out that was because she had a password into her system and so I was not the owner of the files. I found what I thought was the solution to that online. It said to start in Safe Mode and open File Explorer and select folder properties and go to the security tab and select your name and replace permissions. I did that.

Now I get the message that the My Documents folder; refers to a location that is unavailable. The solutions I have found online don't seem to apply to me. What happened and how do I fix that?

thanks
Lee

 

[razel]

Ensure that you are going to the 'My Documents' folder and not any of the shortcuts or links. It is usually at 'C:\Users\USER\My Documents'

Also when you replaced permissions, IIRC, you have to replace the folder and file permissions of all subdirectories and files. You may have just replaced the folder permission.

 

[lee42048]

Yes, I am. I am using Windows Explorer and navigating to g:\users\Doris\my documents when I get the message I mentioned.

I also did check the box to replace all sub folders and file permissions as well, at least I am quite sure I did.

Lee

 

[razel]

You can also try going to the top-most G: \Users folder level and add 'everyone' to have 'full control'. Also remove any 'deny' entries. After you do this, you may need to close all windows explorer windows and re access the folder for the new permissions to take effect.

I remember having to do this once to remove a nagging malware file that denied nearly all access.

 

[Fardringle]

Follow the instructions that you used to change permissions on the files, but also click on the Advanced button and then the Owner tab and give ownership of the files and folders to the user account that she will be using on the new computer. After you do this, her user account should have full access to the files on the old drive.

 

[lee42048]

OK, I tried that. I went to the base user folder and tried to change permissions for the entire contents. I was not able to select everyone, the only options were administrator and my account so I picked administrator. Unfortunately I still get the message, refers to a location that is unavailable.

What else can I try? This is taking long and she is getting desperate. I hope these files are not gone forever, she will shoot me.

thanks
Lee

 

[razel]

They are not gone forever. You just need to add the permissions. As Fardringle mentioned you'll need both ownership and permission. It may need to be done in the right order. Also when you mention, Administrator. There is the user Administrator and the Admininstrators local group. You'll want to add the local group, since Administrator is a user that's is not easily loggable by default. Everyone is also a local group and needs to be searched for and added.

Don't fret or give up... you are almost there. If you want to speed things up, try it 1st on a folder that doesn't have as many folders/files.

Best of luck.

 

[ikky68]

Please make sure that you are part of the Administrators groups (only admin, remove user).
On the root of the HDD, take ownership and replace permission on subs.
In the \users\doris\ there should be a My Documents and a shortcut to My Documents. Check the properties on the My Documents directory. You should have ownership if the replacement permissions propagated down.
That should be it. If you still have problems, let us know.

 

[lee42048]

Thank you, I think I got it figured out, at least I got at some files which may be enough.
Lee