Brian The Dog on 12/9/2009 at 17:00
For future reference, one easy way to move stuff around between hard drives and ignore the Vista permissions stuff, is to boot of a Ubuntu live-cd. You can see both NTFS hard drives, and can copy-and-paste files around to your hearts content.
Enchantermon on 12/9/2009 at 17:12
Okay, sorry, I said the wrong thing. I can right-click on devices, but I can't view the Properties sheet. I click on it and the hard drive whirs for a few seconds, then stops, and nothing happens. It's the same for all devices.
I checked Network Connections and nothing is there. So I refreshed, and I get an error saying that the list of connections couldn't be retrieved, and I should check the Network Connections service. So I went to Services and Applications. What do you know, the service was set to Manual. So I tried to start it. It failed, saying that its dependencies failed to start.
I'm thinking that somehow, my attempting to change permissions on the entire drive messed up a bunch of stuff. My sound card isn't working properly either, by the way. Windows Defender crashes on startup. Unless you have any more suggestions, I'm just going to get a hold of my recovery CD and see if I can do something to fix this. At least it seems like I can access all of my files.
You want to know what's funny? Chkdsk seems to have reset all of the permissions to their default values. Now, all I have to do is give Vista permission to perform the copy operation and it does it, no taking ownership or anything.
By the way, just to reiterate, all of my hardware still works on Vista. It's just XP that's messed up.
Quote Posted by Brian The Dog
For future reference, one easy way to move stuff around between hard drives and ignore the Vista permissions stuff, is to boot of a Ubuntu live-cd. You can see both NTFS hard drives, and can copy-and-paste files around to your hearts content.
I've been told not to write to a hard drive formatted in NTFS when using a Linux OS, as there is the possibility of corruption in the MFT. Otherwise, I would have tried this already.
bikerdude on 12/9/2009 at 17:32
Quote Posted by Enchantermon
Wow, I feel like an idiot now...
I already had Unlocker but it never occurred to me to use it. Seems like I still have to change the ownership, though, otherwise Unlocker isn't even allowed to access the drive. Sheesh, what a headache. I'll see if what Al_B suggested will let Unlocker access the files. Thanks, guys!
ah ok, hmm have you made sure the clocks on both pc's are exactly the same as this will cause the same problem...
Enchantermon on 12/9/2009 at 17:42
I hadn't checked, but I assume they both were. At least the minutes and hours should have been the same. It's kind of hard to check such a thing since I have to swap out one drive to see the other.
Al_B on 12/9/2009 at 18:25
Quote Posted by Bikerdude
ah ok, hmm have you made sure the clocks on both pc's are exactly the same as this will cause the same problem...
It's one laptop - not two separate PCs so the RTC should be the same on both.
Enchantermon on 12/9/2009 at 19:42
Exactly.
Here's a question: if I pop in a Windows XP installation CD that is not the one used to install my version of XP, would it still be able to repair the OS?
Al_B on 12/9/2009 at 19:50
Quote Posted by Enchantermon
I checked Network Connections and nothing is there. So I refreshed, and I get an error saying that the list of connections couldn't be retrieved, and I should check the Network Connections service. So I went to Services and Applications. What do you know, the service was set to Manual. So I tried to start it. It failed, saying that its dependencies failed to start.
You should be able to go to the event viewer (start/run "eventvwr" should open it - although you can go via the control panel) and get more information about the problem. It's worth checking before doing a three hour round trip to get your CD.
Quote:
I'm thinking that somehow, my attempting to change permissions on the entire drive messed up a bunch of stuff.
If you took ownership of the entire drive in Vista then it's possible that some service dlls that should be owned by a SYSTEM account have had their owner changed - and will now refuse to start up. Installing XP again over the top of the existing installation should fix this - but make sure you take a backup first. I've had to do this in the past myself and not had any real problems with programs / documents or settings - with the exception of windows updates.
Quote:
I've been told not to write to a hard drive formatted in NTFS when using a Linux OS, as there is the possibility of corruption in the MFT. Otherwise, I would have tried this already.
I've done this with no problems before - but not enough that I would want to guarantee that there will be no problems. It's been very useful for recovering files when I had a problem with an XP drive that would crash as soon as it was mounted by XP or the recovery CD (obviously - that was just reading, not writing).
Al_B on 12/9/2009 at 19:51
Quote Posted by Enchantermon
Here's a question: if I pop in a Windows XP installation CD that is not the one used to install my version of XP, would it still be able to repair the OS?
Possibly. A retail version may not accept an OEM windows key - but it's worth trying.
Enchantermon on 12/9/2009 at 21:57
Quote Posted by Al_B
You should be able to go to the event viewer (start/run "eventvwr" should open it - although you can go via the control panel) and get more information about the problem.
I'll check that out.
Quote Posted by Al_B
If you took ownership of the entire drive in Vista then it's possible that some service dlls that should be owned by a SYSTEM account have had their owner changed - and will now refuse to start up.
I didn't take ownership of it. I booted into XP, right-clicked on the drive and went to Security. It showed an Everyone group, as you had mentioned, so I selected it and gave it Full Control. After a little while it stopped and told me the drive was corrupted, and, well, you know the rest.
Quote Posted by Al_B
I've done this with no problems before - but not enough that I would want to guarantee that there will be no problems.
Hmm. I just poked around the Fedora site and found a statement saying that you can install NTFS in Fedora and then read/write to an NTFS drive...that'll still probably be my last resort, though.
Quote Posted by Al_B
Possibly. A retail version may not accept an OEM windows key - but it's worth trying.
I ask because I can download XP for free through my school and the MSDNAA. If I can put the iso on my flash drive, boot from that and repair the installation, I should be good to go. I shouldn't need a key just for the repair function, but even if I do, I'll have the one that came with the download.
Al_B on 12/9/2009 at 22:56
Quote Posted by Enchantermon
I didn't take ownership of it. I booted into XP, right-clicked on the drive and went to Security. It showed an Everyone group, as you had mentioned, so I selected it and gave it Full Control. After a little while it stopped and told me the drive was corrupted, and, well, you know the rest.
That should be fine - from your earlier posts I thought the problems started when you unlocked / moved things in Vista. Adding (or changing) the Everyone security group permissions won't change the owner of the file - although it obviously has security implications (but not, I suspect, for your situation).
However, to satisfy my own peace of mind I did exactly the same on my XP machine. I changed the access rights of the Everyone group on my C: drive to full control. It took a long time (10 minutes or so) but both before and after a reboot everything seems to be in order. It's obviously no real consolation but I suspect that there must have been another factor which caused the problems you're now seeing.
As for using the repair function I thought that needed a recovery disk. In my experience that's not usually available but a re-install of XP often takes care of the problem.
