You can read all about my travails in The Pit. But, for now, I call upon the assistance of the Teeming Millions to assist me in getting access to my folders back.
Everything else seems fine, but since I had to reinstall Windows XP, I keep getting an “Access is Denied” message when I try to access the My Documents folder. Furthermore, when I try to look up the security restrictions, I’m not seeing any switches to flip to make the folder accessible to everyone. I know the documents are still in there…
First make sure you’re logged on as a member of the Administrators group. If you’re using XP Home then you may have to reboot in Safe Mode and log on as administrator. Then open My Computer, go to Tools|Folder Options|View, and uncheck Use simple file sharing. Then right-click the folder in question, hit Properties, go to the Security tab, hit Advanced, go to the Owner tab, and change ownership to yourself. You should then be able to set the desired permissions.
If you encrypted your My Documents folder with your previous installation you may be SOOL. The new install will not generate the original’s ‘keys’ and the files may be unrecoverable (i.e. un-decryptable).
I don’t recall encrypting the original folder. Probably something I’d remember.
That said, still no luck. This might strike some as incredibly daft, but how would one…ahem, run in safe mode from the bootup? What key would you hit to, er, make that happen? I’m going to try the original suggestion of trying to get in via Admin access.
You can either start tapping F8 or hold down the Ctrl key just after the BIOS screen disappears. A menu will come up giving startup choices. Arrow down to Safe Mode and hit Enter.
You’ll then need to log in with the username administrator. The password may be blank, but if it’s not you may need to get a utility to reset it.
