AWOL DATA...Administrator profile corrupted...

[phobos2001]

OK, here's my crisis...my Administrator profile (ntuser.dat) file has been corrupted. Windows then logged me into a temp account, which had an Administrator.bak folder. I tried a few things to correct the problem, then attempted to copy files from the .bak folder to CD.

The CD burning software froze, so I "Restarted" the system. When it logged me back into the temp account, the .bak folder was still there, but all of the files inside were gone. The drive size read as being 6.5 GB less filled than before (approximately the amount of info. that was in the .bak folder).

I need to know how I can get this information back, as I think it still must be on the drive somewhere. I either need to be able to repair the original Admin profile, or recover the data off of the drive so I can back it up to disks. I tried using GetDataBack, but that proved useless. All it found was information associated with the new Adiministrator (temp) profile.

I sure hope someone out there can help me with this...there's a lot of important info. I need to recover.

Thanks in advance!

 

[gagslondon]

phobos2001,

did you manage to find a solution to this problem?

I have a similiar one - although I have not lost any of the data in the .bak account - I need to restore it to the correct administrator account.

Did you come across a solution or find out why it happened in the first place?

There is very little about this on the net (quite frustrating)...

 

[phobos2001]

I was able to restore the lost data, using some data recovery software...first, I ran GetDataBack for NTFS, but it found absolutely nothing. Then I tried another program that searches by cluster and it appears to have retrieved everything (still sorting through the 74,000 files it found).

I never was able to restore the actual Admin data file. What you'll probably have to do is back up that .bak folder and restore the information manually (at least that seems to be the safest way).

Definitely don't start fiddling with the account profile, until you've backed up anything you want to keep out of that .bak folder. You shouldn't have to reinstall the OS, you can log in under a different account (with Adim user rights), go into the Admin account and rename the ntuser.dat file. Log out and log back into the Admin account and that should rebuild a new ntuser.dat file (this way you're not overwriting your registry and, therefore, having to reinstall all of your software again).

Once the ntuser.dat file is rebuilt, it shouldn't be difficult to reset any permissions and restore the data from the .bak folder.

I'm not sure why the problem occurred...there's probably 1000 different reasons it could happen. But what I've learned is that it's probably best not to store data in a location associated with a user profile (like the Desktop), and it's also best to leave the Admin account alone, as far as daily use of an account is concerned...just create an account that has Admin user rights and only use the Admin account as a backup, if and when something goes wrong with another account.