[zman27]

I recently upgraded my computer (changing the motherboard, cpu, and video card), all of which were straight out of the box. When I tried to boot, my computer ran though the first few screens fine, but as soon as it was about to load windows (the loading screen popped up for a fraction of a second) it restarted. I know that this system is a working one, because I was using it only about 30 minutes before.
I decided to install windows on a different hard drive, which I did, and which worked w/o a hitch. But, when I attempted to read from my old hard drive, it didn't even see the drive. I checked the format of the partition, and it turned out to be Type 44 (Norton GoBack type), I reverted it back to NTFS, now i could view the drive, but still couldn't boot from it.
I decided to scrap that system, copy my documents/files over and then format it and start again. But when i tried to access my documents it said that access was denied.

I am looking for anyone of a number of solutions:
1) a solution to recover my old system
2) a solution to allow me to access my documents (I know both the user name/password)
3) a solution to re-install windows, but preserve existing user profiles

Any help, suggestions, or solutions are appreciated. Thanks in advance

 

[OldGrayGary]

Hi zman27

There are some tricks that can help the next time you want to do such an extensive in-place upgrade [uninstalling the IDE controllers beforehand is one handy trick (you use the "Standard IDE controller" instead, selecting it manually from the list)- since the chipsets are almost always different in the upgraded motherboard]. Uninstalling drivers for all components that are changing is also recommended. Your restart was actually likely a Fatal error (driver error) that would have shown a blue screen, had the "automatically restart" option (which, sadly, is a default XP behavior) not been selected.

If you are happy with the functionality of your current XP installation, with the only exception being the trouble accessing the earlier installation's files, try taking ownership of them - this should do the trick --- http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[P.S. ... if prompted, don't forget to re-Activate Windows XP with Microsoft within 30 days]