System recovery

[eWhabs]

I know this is not really programming but this is the only place where I'll get decent responses.

I rencently made a system recovery and I had many account on my computer including mine (I'm not the owner). It was password protected and privatized ( you can't view the files from outside, you know?). During the system recovery, all accounts got deleted and an "owner" account has been created, with all at default. But the files from the other accounts have been kept in "Documents and Settings". When I wanted to move my old files from this folder, I got an access denied error. Not that's because the files were privatized and couldn't be viewed from outside of the non-existing account, Thomas. I tried to create another account name "Thomas" but that didn't work :(

Anyone knows what I can do to get my files back??

[eWhabs]

Can anybody help?

[JeremysFilms]

A tip for the future if your running WinXP

Check out the Windows Backup utility that can be found at:

Start>Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Backup
or
System root path: %SystemRoot%\system32\ntbackup.exe

You can use it to create a full system backup of selected files or all information of a selected drive, including all applications, registry, everything!!
Once the backup has been created, you can use it to restore your computer if you screw something up and can't fix it with system restore. If you have another hard-drive, you could put the backup on it incase your computer REALLY gets screwed up. I've saved my computer 2 times so far because of these backups. Once when I accidentally ran a batch file that began deleting all files on my computer, including many important system files... and once when I just screwed things up with a program that didn't uninstall correctly.

It's a great tool to use if your on WinXP (or any other windows OS that has this tool on it?).

I'd recommend checking it out, it can be quite a life saver.

[eWhabs]

Yeah, I would've done that, only I wasn't able to turn on my computer properly, lol.

[henke37]

Check the acl for the files. It's easy to change them, if you are on the pro edition, just right click and chose permissions(or something like that). The dialgoe is very self explaning.

But if the files are encryted, you better have a keybackup.