Windows 2000 Access Denied 1

[mynameisdaniel]

Hi, thanks to all of you for reading this. Well, i've been using windows 2000 professional for about a year, and just last week i had a fatal file error which prevented me from starting windows. I reinstalled a seperate copy of windows 2000, and managed to access the previous installation's files and folders. however, the most important stuff i needed were encrypted, and cannot even be opened, there is a popup which goes "access denied: the source file might be in use" do any of you know how to solve this problem? i tried the previous' forum's methods and they did not work... this problem doesnt even allow you to transfer files to a floppy disk!

 

[GrnEyedLdy]

Daniel,

I'm afraid that if your OS is corrupt you will not be able to access the original users or Recovery Agents private keys in order to decrypt those encrypted files.

If you do not have access to a Recovery Agent's account with a valid recovery key, you cannot recover the data. There is no workaround in EFS. (At least none that I am aware of).


Patty

 

[wolluf]

Have you tried a repair reinstall on the original installation? (boot 2k install CD, choose new installation, it should find both & offer to let you repair. Select original one and type R to let it.

 

[shmoes]

I was reading an article earlier this week. You didn't happen to do a fdisk /mbr did you? because from what i read, the encryption is stored in the boot sector and when you do a fdisk /mbr it wipes out the boot sector, and puts a basic clean boot sector back. therefor losing all the encryption ..

end result .. screwed.

:
hopefully you didn't do this!

~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[wolluf]

Schmoes - the encryption is NOT stored in the MBR.

 

[shmoes]

I will find the article, my translation may be wrong, but that's what i'm sure it said.

then again, don't believe everything you read... right ..




~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[shmoes]

http://www.cknow.com/vtutor/vtfdiskmbr.htm

ok, i was a BIT over board, but if you read the first comment, some security systems do use it.



~Shmoes

I lay claim to nothing and everything. My words may be wisdom or disaster. In the end you make a choice. Noone is perfect.

 

[mynameisdaniel]

thanks for answering guys for the repair installation, it said i needed a emergency repair disk, which i did'nt have. and it says in the startup that some file was corrupted, and this was in the winNT folder. (winNT in this case, but elsewhere its probably womething else) Now i'm thinking of getting a emergency repair disk from some company like compaq to repair the installation. do you think it'll work? my computer is a fujitsu, but it was originally a winME com. i installed win 2000 and it screwed on me. darn. will be switching to mandrake linux after this, trying out

 

[wolluf]

There are 2 types of repair. One may need an Emergency Repair Disk (ERD), the other does not. The steps I described above lead to the one that does not. Did you follow them (particularly, choose new installation, NOT repair option, when asked. Install process should then find your existing installation and offer to repair it - type R to agree)? If you choose the repair option earlier (instead of new), you get another choice - recovery console or repair. This repair option askes for ERD - but if you haven't got one, it will still try to find and repair your installation (probably finds it 50% of the time).
Also, the ERD must have been produced on your own machine (when it was functioning properly) - you can't just get one from elsewhere - it won't work.

 

[mynameisdaniel]

i tried that, but however, it only showed my LATER installation, and did not show the faulty installation. weird. when i booted it up, it said some file was corrupt or missing. when i tried to copy that file from the new installation to the old installation, but it denied me access. is my computer finished?

 

[wolluf]

Your computer's obviously reasonably ok - second installation working - but it sounds like your encrypted documents might be lost.
Two points about copying problem file from new to old:-

1 - what is the file (need to know if its a common system file or one of old installation's registry files. If the second, copying one from first won't do - but there may be a backup in the original set up, so please post )?

2 - does denied you access mean lack of permissions to overwrite old file? (in which case you can just take ownership of it and give yourself permissions) or is it access to file you were copying from (ie, its in use - which would suggest its a registry file - but if its just a system file, we can get round that in recovery console).

 

[mynameisdaniel]

thanks wolluf, how do you use the recovery console? the files are of all kinds, .doc, and all that. and oh yeah, when it startups, the error message is that of

winNT/system32/config/system

maybe if i could repair this i could get the previous installation. also, it seems to me that it means the total file control, i can't open it, read it, or transfer it or anything.

 

[wolluf]

Ok, you should be able to do this from your working installation (btw, I'm assuming original installation is in \winnt). \WINNT\system32\config\system is part of the registry, so there are at least 2, possibly 3 previous versions of it on your old installation. So, I would try them in this order.

1. Rename \WINNT\system32\config\system to something else (eg, system.old).

2. In the same folder \WINNT\system32\config, there is another file called system.alt. Rename this to system. Now try booting your old installation.

3. If that doesn't work, go back to working installation.
Rename system to system.alt again. Now find \WINNT\repair. If there is a folder regback under there (if you've ever backed up the registry, it will be there), navigate to that. Then copy the file system from there to folder \WINNT\system32\config. Now try booting old installation.

4. If that doesn't work, or no regback, find \WINNT\repair again. Copy the file system from there to folder \WINNT\system32\config. This is a copy of the origianl 'system' file from when 2k installed (so if you've made lots of changes it may not work) - so even if it boots, you may find things odd (but if it lets you recover encrypted documents...). Try booting old installation again.

 

[mynameisdaniel]

thanks a million! going to try it out

 

[edemiere]

Ahh yes, the joys of using NTFS and getting the royal shaft. I don't see any real reason why anyone in their right mind would use NTFS in a home environment, there just is no real cause for it.

I hope you can at least learn something from this lesson and try to not make that kind of mistake again.

If it were FAT32, you'd be all set and could easily get anything you wanted, hassle free!

Good luck getting it up and running again and may Bill Gates have mercy on your soul!

hehe

 

[mynameisdaniel]

lol, haha. thanks wolluf, it worked. just that now its just stuck at a blank screen at startup. i've given up on it.