Recently i tried to update my XP Home to XP Proffesional, with no luck - it messed up! Kept saying Windows had encurred a problem and would shut down to prevent damage. I was forced to use the XP Home CD to boot from and reinstall XP Home. This has created a big problem in that, although the My Documents folder was saved from all users, The original user accounts no longer exist, and therefore i cannot access the folders that were set as 'private'. Access is not available to them from any account other than the account in which they were created (which no longer exists). Its not even possible to delete these folders for the same reason! Is there ANY way that i can recover the files that are in these folders? Iv tried using dos to get into them, but i get 'invalid directory' messages. please help!! cheers

Kept saying Windows had encurred a problem and would shut down to prevent damage. What's the exact error message? i_XpUser

I can't remember, the error doenst come up anymore. Windows now loads up normally. The problem is these folders that i am denied access to.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to give your new UserAccount permissions to access the private folders of your lost UserAccount: ▫ [XP 108468] HowTo access Private Folders ___________________________________________ ☺ [Belgium, GMT+1]_________________________svg

I run XP Home, where this security option is not available. I therefore hooked my hdd to a friends computer that runs XP proffesional (setting it to a slave) in order to use the XP Pro security functions. (It was attempting to update to XP Pro that brought on this problem in the first place - it failed and i was forced to reinstall Home). Attempting to access the security tab in the folder options on this second hdd, i get the following Security Warning: 'You do not have permission to view or edit the current permission settings for *****, but you can take the ownership or change the auditing settings' I am not able to change the permissions and thus am still unable to access these folders! please help otherwise im gona have to format the drive as i have about 20Gbs in these folders that i cant get to! cheers Dan

Hi Dan, I've added an explanation of how to get the Security tab in XP Home Edition (via XP SafeMode). Sorry about that - I should have checked which version of XP you had running. ___________________________________________ ☺ [Belgium, GMT+1]_________________________svg