I dont want to hear anything about changing operating systems in this thread I just REALLY need a solution.

My friends computer(WinXP) stuffed up recently, his 80gig HDD had some very important documents and about 12gig of music, all in his users documents, now because that account was an admin account, he cant acces it from the OS on his other 80gig (we installed XP on there not long ago) because its locked "Acces is denied"
Somehow, we managed to get windows to log in, and we were extremly relieved to find it logged in under his account, but then when he went to "My Documents"....
It was empty [img]graemlins/1pissed.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/1pissed.gif[/img]
Anyone know whats going on? We dont really think its empty and the files have gone, and we really hope not, so is there any way to get into that folder? It cant be copied, cut, deleted, Xcopied or anything :(

Also, I scanned for viruses with my computer and found nothing.... Plus he had Zonealarm and Norton on it...

very wierd.. hey hive.. i was thinking if you guys have heard of the linux bootable windows. it works great for emergency like this one. knoppix is what is called. if somehow you can get that.. it is a bootable software of linux where you can burn all the files stored in your hard drive to a cd. you can get knoppic linux from a computer magazine or download it. (i suggest computer magazine) im not sure about the speling but it has the penguin logo [img]smile.gif[/img]

<span style="color: lightblue">Knoppix also Gentoo, Ubuntu, Slackware (?), MandrakeMove, Damn Small Linux, and alot of others...

But, what filesystem is on the drive? If it's NTFS, to try the Linux LiveCD you'll need a distro with a 2.6 kernel - Ubuntu has one, I know, and it is apparently on this month's PC Authority.

And, Jarrad, I thought you were a techy now? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Hehe, well yeah, but I suppose there are *some* though not many, things I cant figure out :D

he has more techiness to go i presume :D

Were you looking in the right "My Documents"? The one that shows up at the top of the Explorer tree is actually a dynamic link to another folder in the system... it's different for everyone.

I'd start at C:\, then work your way through Documents and Settings to find his user ID and his own My Docs folder. The stuff should be in there.

That's part of the reason that I (a) use my own folder instead of My Docs and (b) always have two logons to a machine, each with administrator rights. If I muck up one of 'em, I can use the other. If I muck up both, I can reinstall Windows...

Yup. he looked EVERYWHERE for the files, the proper location of his documents was empty...

Just try the find command and look for .avi, .mp3, .doc etc.

This should bring up a list of files with the correct path to his personal documents.

Beat me to it, Dace. That's how i always find something that's missing [img]tongue.gif[/img]