Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[crazysheep]

So this 5 year old laptop is throwing up a couple of problems for some unknown reason. If anyone has been following my pick and plump helmet adventure, you'll know that the LCD screen has gone south (so far I know that it's not a burnt out graphics card, as attaching an external monitor allows me to use the laptop).

The main problem now is that I cannot access the second partition on my hard drive. It's a single hard drive partitioned into into two, one for OS and one for all the other files, and I am being denied access to the partition with all the other files in it. I know that the files are still there as antivirus scans can be run normally on that partition, but it's the lack of user access that's bugging me.

Points to note: I am using a regular admin account to log on to the system, so I should be able to do a lot of things which require admin access.

[Tellemurius]

can you change the owner of the folder to the new account?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx

[miauw62]

Can you ditch UAC?

[foil]

Did you reinstall Windows on the 1st partition after setting the folders on 2nd drive to "private"?

[crazysheep]

can you change the owner of the folder to the new account?
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx

I'm getting "access denied" messages to a number of folders within the drive after trying that trick, which means that I can't get any access to the drive at all.

Can you ditch UAC?

Already ditched UAC.

Did you reinstall Windows on the 1st partition after setting the folders on 2nd drive to "private"?

Nope. This is essentially on factory default settings, which haven't been touched in over 5 years. This is the first time I'm seeing this problem.

[Tellemurius]

make a new admin account and i want you to change the file permissions to take full control for that account only
http://www.howtogeek.com/72718/how-to-understand-those-confusing-windows-7-fileshare-permissions/
If you are still getting a access denied on that partition the security permissions might be fragged for the OS.
Run this http://lallousx86.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/resetting-ntfs-files-security-and-permission-in-windows-7/

[foil]

Have you tried to access the drive with a "run as admin" Windows Explorer window?

Was the drive like this when bought new, and what sizes are the partitions?

Also do you have a lot of stuff you need to keep on it as you might need to fresh install Windows to fix it.

[Alastar]

If your data partition isn't encrypted, you could try fixing it from an operating system that doesn't care about Windows permissions. Most Linuxes are fully functional directly from the cd/usb live medium.

Opening your file manager as root, copying/sending things somewhere else may be enough to make them accessible under Windows again. If you need to play around with Linux permissions and aren't familiar with Unixoids yet you may need to do a little reading... but it's probably worth your time. Having a live OS lying around for troubleshooting, emergency use or simply things your primary one does badly is dead useful.

[crazysheep]

Am working on using icacls to try and solve the problem now: it reset everything but 1 file - pagefile.sys.

I did consider using Linux to solve the problem (a friend of mine set me up with ubuntu on a flash drive), except that I've been a Windows user all along, so I'm not exactly good with learning a new OS off the bat. If I need to I can try that.

Of course, the final option I have is to use System Restore.

[Tellemurius]

Am working on using icacls to try and solve the problem now: it reset everything but 1 file - pagefile.sys.

I did consider using Linux to solve the problem (a friend of mine set me up with ubuntu on a flash drive), except that I've been a Windows user all along, so I'm not exactly good with learning a new OS off the bat. If I need to I can try that.

Of course, the final option I have is to use System Restore.

pagefile.sys? try changing the total virtual memory on the computer and see if that works.

[crazysheep]

Changing the total virtual memory helped icacls work.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But that doesn't solve the overall problem

[Tellemurius]

did making a new account made a difference?

[crazysheep]

Sadly, nope.

[gimlet]

Hmm, OK my 3 ideas:

1) Set up that partition as "shared", see if you can access it from another computer on the network.

2) Make a linux Live usb stick, boot the pc from that and see if you can access it from linux (reminder: don't "install" linux, just boot live)
2b) When booted live, attach a USB drive and do a raw copy of the whole 2nd partition onto the USB drive, see if files on that copy are accessible.

3) Put the hard drive as a 2nd drive in another PC.

4 (bonus) - If you have a decent amount of free space on the working partition, see if a compression program like 7zip can pull files off the bad partition - maybe it's just windows explorer that can't display them or something.  Even if you don't have that much space, you could at least see if it's starting to work...

In any case, I'd be making a backup of the important stuff that's anywhere on the whole drive and thinking about a replacement.  For sure I'd start running disk diagnostics - find a SMART utility and look for errors, and the low level drive test program from the drive manufacturer.  Backup first...

[crazysheep]

A live boot from a Linux USB stick worked. I copied some of the files onto an external HDD and the Windows environment recognises the files just fine

I don't think this completely solves the main problem though, so I'll keep this thread open for now.


EDIT: running icacls and then turning UAC on and then off again has solved disk partition access.