Need to retreive files from old HDD - admin ownership NOT WORKING

[chompison]

Title pretty much speaks for itself. Extra details below...

This is my situation.

Several months ago my desktop computer had some bizarre error possibly caused by spyware, which would mark the first time I've EVER had a problem on XP Home. I randomly got a popup when I wasn't even surfing the net, and then... well I don't remember if I turned my computer off or if it shut down on its own... which it has always had a tendency too on occasion. Overheating, faulty powersupply connection or MAYBE power surge, I think... my laptop does it too.

When I turned it back on, it went through BIOS check and started loading XP Home like normal... but then went to a black screen and did nothing, no matter how long I left it. No cursor on the screen either. No beeps. Nothing. I tried booting in every safe mode but it always did the same thing.

Eventually I took an old unused hard drive I had packed away and installed XP on it. Once I installed the motherboard stuff to allow multiple drives, I hooked up the bad drive as slave on the same IDE cable. Old format, I know. When I booted the computer it still wanted to load XP from the bad drive. It DID actually load, but it was unbelieveably slow with everything. Then I put the bad drive on a separete IDE channel altogether and it booted properly, from the new drive.

Anyway... none of that is really important. The problem is, now that I've got the new hard drive running XP Home properly, I've been rescuing all my files off the bad drive. MOST of everything went without a hitch.

I learned about the ownership stuff and that helped a lot... but then I came to a large set of files all in the same parent folder that are irreplaceable and even when I take ownership of the files, they STILL say access denied. I can't transfer them to my good drive. I can't copy them, I can't even OPEN them, but they do still have a filesize and I know they aren't corrupt. Some of the files in the same directory DO work, but most do not.

What can I do to rescue them?

[glc]

Did you take ownership of the parent folder and all subfolders AS ADMINISTRATOR, then allow everyone full control? You have to do this in safe mode.

[ChoboSeki]

Originally Posted by glc Did you take ownership of the parent folder and all subfolders AS ADMINISTRATOR, then allow everyone full control? You have to do this in safe mode.

Windows 7 Take Ownership & Grant Permissions to Access Files & Folder

This has actually happened to me on my mom's hard drive and I did this to fix it. It kept saying access denied until I did it. You DO have to be running as administrator (I believe) but not in safe mode.

You may want to temporarily disabled UAC if it doesn't work.

Start > type in MSCONFIG
Tools > Change UAC Settings

[glc]

This is XP Home. You have to use safe mode to log in as Administrator, and there's no UAC.

[ChoboSeki]

Originally Posted by glc This is XP Home. You have to use safe mode to log in as Administrator, and there's no UAC.

Oh, I was half asleep..

[chompison]

Ya I was on as administrator from the start and I did successfully take ownership of most of the files. It was just those few files that decided not to play along.

I did get it working finally last night.

For some reason, with those few specific files, when I went to Security > Advanced > Owner, it just plain didn't list Administrator as a possible option at all, whereas with the other files, it did. All it showed was SYSTEM and S-235-235235235235235 or whatever and selecting either of them didn't give me access.

Finally what worked was, I manually added admin to the list instead of going to Advanced at all, and then it worked.