My harrowing experience over the past 24 hours:
- Windows 7 installation hosed after bluetooth driver install.
- Attempting to recover using restore points via "Repair" on the bootable Windows 7 installation CD.
- Attempting to go back one day in the restore points. No joy.
- Attempting to go back two days in the restore points. No joy.
- Attempting to go back one week in the restore points.
- Still no joy. Windows won't boot. Apparently something is REALLY hosed.
And then it hits me -
- PANIC - the restore points somehow reverted DATA files to their older versions! Word, Powerpoint, SPSS, etc document versions are all one week old now.
- Using the "freshest" restore point.
- Failed to restore yesterday's restore point!!!
- I am stuck at old versions of the data!!!
- Booting KNOPPIX, mounting NTFS partition as read-only under KNOPPIX. Checking.
- Nope, the data files are still the one week old versions.
- Booting Windows 7 CD, Recovery console - Cmd prompt - navigating - yep, data files are still one week old.
- Removing the drive, mounting it under other Windows 7 installation.
- Still old data.
- Running NTFS undelete on the drive (read-only scan), searching for file created yesterday.
- Not found.
Despair.
At this point, idea: I will install a brand new Windows installation, keeping the old one in Windows.old (default behaviour of Windows installs).
I boot the new install, I go to my C:\Data\ folder, I choose "Restore previous versions", click on yesterday's date, and click open...
YES! It works!
I can see the latest versions of my files (e.g. from yesterday).
And then, I try to view the files under the "yesterday snapshot-version" of C:\Users\MyAccount\Desktop
...
And I get Permission Denied
as soon as I try to open Users\MyAccount
.
I make sure I am an administrator. No go.
Apparently, the new Windows installation does not have access to read the "NTFS snapshots" or "Volume Shadow Snapshots" of my old Windows account!
Cross-installation permissions?
I need to somehow tell the new Windows install that I am the same "old" user...
So that I will be able to access the Users\MyAccount
folder of the snapshot of my old user account.
Help?
EDIT: Thank you, Kyle - you saved me!
- I opened an elevated cmd prompt (I.e. Right click/Run as admin)
- Typed: "net user administrator /active:yes"
- Logged out and logged back in as admin.
- The user folders in the snapshots were then accessible.