Can't get to my files!

October 8, 2006 6:52 PM

Please help get my files inaccessible accessible so I can work on the train tomorrow!

I run WinXP Pro on a domain at work. I back up my work files to a TrueCrypt NTFS volume on a 60GB USB hard drive. I used Cygwin's rsync to back up my important files to the TrueCrypt drive. I need to get some work done on these files, but my home laptop is preventing me from opening any of them due to permissions restrictions. My home laptop is WinXP Home.

- I've tried running cacls.exe and xcacls.exe to grant myself permissions, but both give me a "Access denied."
- I've tried booting into safe mode on my home laptop to get in to my administrator account (WinXP Home doesn't let you login as administrator unless you're in safe mode), but TrueCrypt won't run in safe mode.

How do I get access to these files from my home laptop? Is there a hack to the NTFS ACL format? Is there a LiveCD that I can download that will ignore ACL restrictions?

Thanks!

posted by yellowbkpk to computers & internet (3 comments total)

I think that this previous post may be relevant, which in turn is referred back by majick to this previouslier post, but I don't have direct experience with the scenario you describe.
posted by misterbrandt at 8:27 PM on October 8, 2006

Assuming you have a way through the TrueCrypt encryption at home and that your problem is indeed NTFS permission restrictions, all you should have to do is take ownership of the folders you want to get at.

You do indeed need to be logged on as a member of the Administrators group to make this work. Unless you've been very devious, if your XP Home installation has only one account then that account is already a member of Administrators (the User Accounts control panel applet won't let you set all your user accounts to Limited User).

If you have actually managed to make all your normal logon accounts Limited Users, you can still get to the Administrator account without using Safe mode. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del twice at the standard Welcome screen (the one where you click an account icon to log on) and you'll get the non-graphical Windows logon box, into which you can type any username you like.
posted by flabdablet at 8:34 PM on October 8, 2006

Yep, as flabdablet said, there's no restriction at all in XP Home as to only being able to log in as admin under safe mode.

One other way that might work: log onto XP Home as yourself, but run Windows Explorer as administrator. You can do this with the "Run As" command; run Windows Explorer normally, navigate to your Windows directory (normally C:\WINDOWS\), and then hold down shift as you right-click on the explorer.exe file. One option will be "Run As..."; run it as administrator. (There's also a command-line version of this, runas.exe, that you can use.)

Hope this helps...
posted by delfuego at 7:15 AM on October 9, 2006