All right first post (so go easy on me), but let me tell what happened and what has been tried so far...I caught a nasty little bugger on my laptop. After shutdown, Windows XP is in accessable. When try to boot in safe mode, all I got was a black screen and a cursor. Tried a repair from the windows disk.. didn't work. Cannot do a complete format, because I have to have the files saved in my documents. So.. partitioned the drive and installed windows there, so we could at least get IN and do a virus scan, kill the buggers, and copy my documents folder off the system to then be able to do a complete format.Now I have a workable, booting windows on drive E. The problem is.. From the working windows on E, my Documents folder on C- under the old administrator password -cannot be opened, moved, copied. It does not give an option to input the password to access the folder either.And now if I try to boot windows on C, it says it cannot boot because windows/system32/config/system is corrupt or missing. Sooo... I either need a way to get those files system files into the corrupt windows to get it working again, or a way to kill the admin password through DOS? I did try a few windows recovery programs (on a trial) but it did not even recognize the C drive profiles to do a reset. I also tried a couple file unlockers, to no avail.I cannot lose my documents folder!! There has to be a way to get at it.Any help or ideas would be appreciated.
Had tried some password removal software, was only detecting the profiles for the E drive windows and not the C drive. Had also tried to repair windows from the recovery CD... no go.Thanks though! I wasn't really asking to be given software, just ideas that I hadn't come across yet.That's neither here nor there anymore... I figured it out!Downloaded Ubuntu, burned to a disk and then booted from CD.. effectively bypassing windows and its pesky admin password. I am now in the process of copying the my document files off and will then run a complete format on the hard drive. (Thanks to whoever posted this idea on another thread.. which I cannot find now... I am a happy girl!)