Need OS help

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:04 pm

Yeah, I farked up my computer

Let me give the back story of how it happened, first.

I'm running Windows XP on it, with one 80 Gig harddrive. The other day I went to "Log Off" and chose to "Switch User". This left win-amp running in the background while I was at the menu to choose which user one would want to use to log in. While in this state, we had a power outage

Upon trying to start my computer (when the power came back on) Windows began to load and then farted out (nice little blue error screen came up, Something about it thinking I installed new hardware and needing me to restart it if I hadn't changed anything or to remove the new hardware and restart). I think it has something to do with the system thinking the user "Jonathan" is still on. I can not get into Windows in safe mode.

I removed the hard drive and made it the slave drive in this computer that I am typing from. I can get in and access all the files, except for the files under the user "Jonathan". Anything "shared" and used by all of the users (programs and such) are accessible. I am just glad I saved all of the AMV's I've DL'ed and most of my AMV work in general areas (I just finished burning copies of all of that incase I need to re-install/re-format windows).

Any suggestions as to what to do would be much appreciated.

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:11 pm

The last time i checked, Win Xp has a default admin user. if you can, log into that admin and try from there.

/end

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:15 pm

No, Windows won't load.

I put the drive in as a slave on another computer and tried to access the files on it. I could access all of them except for the ones under the user "Jonathan".

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:44 pm

What happens when you try to access the data?

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 5:47 pm

My guess would be that the "You don't not have access privelege" message comes up.

i have win2k and win xp on my system and i can access admin data on winxp or 2k if i use the admin status in either OS.

don't know if that would help you.

/end

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 8:13 pm

E:\Documents and Settings\Jonathan is not accessible.

Access is denied.

Yes, it is checked as read only. I don't think this would effect my access to it, but even at that, when I uncheck "read only" and apply it to the folder (and all subfolders) it immediatly returns to read only.

I can access E:\Documents and Settings\All Users, E:\Documents and Settings\Guest, and E:\Documents and Settings\Max (the other user) just fine.

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 8:18 pm

What's the filesystem on the drive? If it's FAT32, you could get a Windows 98 bootdisk and do an XCOPY in DOS to another part of the drive...

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 8:32 pm

NTFS.

The error I get is talks about either un-accessable boot sector or some sort of error with the boot sector when loading. I usually get about 2 seconds into the Win XP loading screen before it goes nutzo.

If it helps, when I try to run safe mode, it get to system32\mup.(something) That is the last system file it loads before I get an error. I also hit F8 and tried loading with (debbuging?). It tells me the HAL (not 9000) is corrupt or flawed in some way.

Lyrs · Post by **Lyrs** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 8:48 pm

I guess you probably already tried to boot up in safe-mode, right?

/end

kthulhu · Post by **kthulhu** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 9:33 pm

Sounds to me like the power outage killed your boot sector, big time, and fucked up some other shit. Hopefully it didn't create hardware damage...was Winamp playing anything during the "Switch User" procedure, and if so, was it from that part of the drive that can't be accessed now?

As for a solution:

How many partitions are on this drive? If you have several, and one of them doesn't have any important shit, you could try installing XP on it. If you only have one partition, but also have a gig or so of free space, you could get a copy of Partition Magic and make a spare to do that. Considering your HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer, as I recall) is in bad shape, this is probably the best idea...

I think your XP is SOL, myself.