Well, I am in Bangkok right now. On my last day in the Maldives, my laptop suddenly stopped working. It would just not start up anymore. I tried two different power adapters (they both work), nothing worked. Took out the batteries, etc., nothing. What happened just before that happened was that I had the base station for my digital camera attached per USB to the laptop when it was already running low on power, on batteries (actually 0 % showing) - transfering pictures. Suddenly, I got a weird error message like "USB violation - power limits exceeded" or something like that...saying that an external USB device was drawing more power than the computer could provide. Shortly after that, the computer stopped working completely. Anyway, I thought I'd take it to some computer store here in Bangkok, so I spent all day in this huge computer center, Puntip Plaza or something like that. Unfortunately, I gave my computer to the most incompetent person I have ever seen. He took 4 1/2 hours and when I got my computer back, not only did the power still not work, but he broke both bay slots for the extra battery and the CD-RW/DVD drive (physically broke them, they keep falling out now). I argued for a while and then realized how fruitless this was, considering the guy did not speak English and at some point started ignoring me. I took the computer to another place and they replaced the DC voltage thing on the motherboard. They said it worked for an hour and then it went dead again. So now I am sitting here with a broken computer (this is from a computer in the hotel lounge, by the way one of the nicest hotels I have ever been to, Conrad Bangkok). I had the last computer place take out the internal hard drive and put it into a USB kit. Needless to mention they could not do that either because their case was too small, so now I am using it without the case. ANYWAY - finally to my question - I have attached my hard drive to this computer here in the lounge and I can access it, but all the files I urgently need to access are in the "My Documents" folder. However, I cannot access that folder if my hard drive is not the boot drive or is not in my computer (don't know exactly, anyway, I cannot access it). Here is the question: Is there any trick to still get to the contents of this folder from another computer? Thanks so much for your advice. I know there are a lot of computer-savvy people out there who might be able to help. By the way, the computer is an IBM A-31P.
I honestly never heard of that, guess it would make sense to protect someone's files but was unaware that Microsoft actually could acccomplish that. What are you running, Win 2K? XP? What message are you getting when you try to open the directory?
man... that sucked big time! Sorry I can't help you out with your problem Jackie... Hope someone like DoD or R2K knows how to access those files. BTW, if you get a chance to visit some of the famous temples in Bankok, make sure to make some good wishes while you are there! I'm sure you'll have better luck with the rest of your trip!
yeah, it's in either %drive%/My Documents/ for 9x kernel or %drive%/Documents and Settings/Your user name before/My Documents
you can get to it via the little DOS ( C:\>) prompts by CD'ing (that's changing directory) to the real directory where the "My Documents" folder exists, or by using the emergency computer's EXPLORER window... but you have to have the old hard drive connected. Your old hard drive would be something like D: or E: or who-knows-what. If you know the PATHs, or ways to your directory, along with your username and locatiosn, you can CD to that directory. BBnP4l (is this a serial #?) is right... you can go into the directories and copy to a DISK. When changing to a directory with spaces in its name, use the " quote thingies. Go to C: Type DIR to see all its contents. If you don't know where to go, type "DIR /W" to see a wide listing. You should start seeing the folders that BBn4l suggests. Travel to the "My Documents" directory, and from there, do a copy command: COPY ** A:\ ^ copies everything from where you are to the A: drive. See how that goes.
Swoly (and Azadre) , thanks a lot for your advice. Unfortunately, even in DOS, it will not let me access that folder. It simply says "Access is denied". This kind of sucks... When I try to do the copy command, it just says that 0 files were copied.
Yes. I was thinking about that, but I do not know where I could enter that in order to access that folder.
1. Find The Folder. 2. Right Click on it. 3. Select properties. 4. Select Security 5. Click On Advanced 6. Select Owner. 7. Run through the process to make your identity on the current boot HD the owner. 8. Close properties and re-open. 9. Return to the security tab. Set your current identity to "allow" under all catagories.
Thanks a lot for this advice. I was also thinking about that, I am just a little bit concerned about one thing - once my computer is repaired and the hard drive re-inserted, will it not ask for the owner of this lounge computer to access that hard drive? That will be when I will already be back in Spain, so obviously I will not be able to access as the owner of this lounge computer...I just want to make sure I do not mess it up completely...thanks.
Owner is only the person who has permission to change administrator rights. Administrators can change owners. When you get back there you can re-take ownership and change rights.
Ottomaton, THANK YOU! I just did what you told me and now I have access to my files. Thank you so much!!!
Hmm...weirdest thing. I can now access the folder and see the files, but when I try to access them (e.g., pictures), they do not show...
