Emergency!! Porn in danger!!
 

Ok, my mobo took a shit on me. The C: drive on said computer houses all my smut and homework for every class I have taken so far. C: drive also formatted with NTFS. All important items were stored in My Docs and I set it to be a private folder. I tried installing the C: drive as a second HDD on another computer, but to no avail. Told me "access is denied." Then I tried installing the C: drive into another computer and boot from it, but that didn't work either. Aside from paying god knows how much for professional data extraction, the only think I can think of is d/l @stake LC4 and recover the Administrator password (I forgot it...) and try to get in that way. I have droves and droves of smut on that drive, plus a term paper that I need for Thursday.

PLEASE HELP!!

So your motherboard went out, but if you put your hard drive in another machine, it won't boot from it? So your motherboard and hard drive are bad? I would say try using norton ghost and copying the current hard drive information onto another hard drive (sometimes hard drives that won't work properly to boot will still work well enough to be ghosted) and put the new hard drive into whatever computer you have that you tested the hard drive in after you discovered your motherboard was bad...

Other than that, if the hard drive that isn't working well enough to be booted from or ghosted, may as well toss it in the trash.

Scott

Nothing wrong with the HDD, but it won't boot from it. Mobo definitely shot, though. Problem is I can't get at the data cuz of NTFS.

You can try putting the drive in another machine that has the same OS as you had and log into that machine as administrator. You may need to take ownership of the folder as admin to have access to the stuff within.

Other than that, try and recover the password.

If you installed the OS yourself, you can probably reinstall the OS in a repair mode and re-establish the administrator account and password without loosing your data.

Since the drive is formated NTFS, the built in security signature file will not allow access to this drive in a different machine, not easily anyway. This is a security measure designed to prevent stolen hard drvies from being read in other machines.

They're both XP Pro Corp. machines. I hope @stake LC4 can recover the Admin password.

try useing Toms root boot http://www.toms.net/rb/

Try accessing it in Safe Mode.

wait a second here! do a search for NTFSDOS on the web. It is a free utility that goes on to a floppy boot disk. when you execute the program, it will create a virtual image of the drive and allow you read only access to it. its a great program but it will only read, not write. I think the full read-write version is $400. :-(

i had this happen to me not too long ago (drive went kaputt lost several system files, thus no booting)...

if you know anything at all about linux then go in and install a small version of linux on another hard drive and make sure it has NTFS read compiled into the kernel.

Linux will not respect WinXP's file restrictions and you can read it and copy it wherever with ease.

if you dont have a hard drive spare that you can install linux on while you do this copy you might want to try Knoppix (bootable Linux CD), but you will need to mount the other hard drives (the one to read and the other to write) and do it that way..

sorry, can't help too much with Knoppix since I havent messed with it before.

Actually I had this happen to me... and I found that by renaming my computer to what the old computer name was, as well as the workgroup, and my previous drive's name, I could do it. I gave myself the exact same login for extra help in this.. Then I was able to just take ownership of the drive by going through the Security tab in its properties.

It's definitely a good idea to make a Ghost copy of the drive first, so if whatever you try messes it up, you can always re-ghost the drive and try again.

I don't have a whole lot of time right now but I'll check back tomorrow and if you still haven't fixed it, I may have more info for you.

Knoppix (as mentioned above) should at least let you get to the data.

There's a bootdisk method that allows you to change the Administrator password to anything you want. A commercial version is here:
http://www.lostpassword.com/windows-xp-2000-nt.htm
and it may work fine, but I don't know if it's worth $200..

I've used a free version to recover a Win2k password -- it's a Linux bootdisk and works just about as well, but it's been a while and I can't remember the name or source.

This might be the free version of the boot disk:
http://www.pchelplive.com/article.php?sid=70

I don't think @stake's LC4 will work if you retrieve the SAM file using ntfsdos or linux, as the samfile's probably protected with SYSKEY. But you still may be able to reset that password with the bootdisk-method.

Can you login to the box as any other user at all? It doesn't sound like it but if you can, I can explain a way to find out what the current Admin password is using the AT scheduler and the bootdisk-method. Let me know if you're interested....

Sorry, I gotta get going but I'll check back tomorrow and hopefully will have more info if you haven't already fixed it by then. Good luck!

p.s. I think if you reinstall Windows, that necessarily will erase the My Documents folder. Also, I know WinXP does hardware checking, so you if your mobo is dead you might need the same model mobo to replace it, and even then it may still not work...I know you can't move the same install of WinXP between different hard disks as it does hardware-specific checking.

Good luck!

BTW here's an mskb article on the subject:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=321305

Just log in to the running machine as an Admin andtake ownership of the Use profile on the other HD. Be sure to have permissions propegate to all sub folders. I've had to do it here at work - it works.. A pain int eh ass, but it works

I GOT MY PORN BACK!!!!!!!!!!! Much thanks to Fearless_Hyena for all his help with Knoppix!!!

Linux is great for when windows gets it's head stuck up it's ass. Just be fucking careful with linux NTFS write support, it is most definatly not yet safe to use. The linux pased NTFS password resetter is at http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html , I've used it on a few servers at work. It does work, but CAN hose your filesystem, so don't use it unless your only other option is reinstalling windows.