Vista- Made an administrator account, all files are gone

So in my infinite wisdom, I created an administrator account to bypass all of the 'Admin Permission' popup windows. Unfortunately, I cannot find a lot of the pictures that were on my old account. I did delete the other account. I'm asking, though, because some of my other pictures are still on the computer. Are the other ones hidden somewhere? Is there some way that I can do a system restore to before I changed the accounts?

Any help is appreciated!

 

It's Windows' built in security at work. All files and folders have an Owner, and only that owner can access them. You have deleted the user account that owns these folders so now you can't access them.

Let us know what version of Windows you are using and someone will show you how to activate the hidden Administrator account. That account has unfettered access to everything regardless of owner and has the power to change ownerships to your current user account. The steps required for that can then be provided.

 

Apologies - I missed Vista in the title, so in the Start > Search box enter cmd and above you should see cmd.exe. Right click on that and select Run as Administrator. In the command window that opens type net user administrator /active:yes. Reboot and you will have a new Administrator icon on your desktop. Click on that and come back for guidance on changing permissions.

 

I completed the steps you listed and got the message the command was successful. Unfortunately, there is no new icon on my desktop.

 

You did reboot?

 

Yes, I did.

 

Can you go to Control Panel > User Accounts and click on Manage Another Account. In addition to your own account is there an Administrator account? Also, try logging off - do you then get the option to log back on to the Administrator account?

 

Getting late here. If this is still unresolved when I log in tomorrow I'll set up a Vista VM to see what's going on. I've been using Win 7 so far as 7 and Vista are much alike under the hood.

 

The only account listed is 'ADMINISTRATOR' (Name I've given it) with the 'Administrator' subscript. There is another one called 'ASP.NET Machine Account', but I've read that is just for the .NET update. Thanks for your help so far, I really appreciate it.

 

Check if the C:\Users\youroldusername folder still exists. If it does can you open My Documents in there or does it give you an access error?

 

I can open C:\Users\myoldusername. I can even open the documents, but nothing is there except some little program file I don't remember...

 

OK, I have a Vista VM available now so we can resolve this I'm sure. The tip above to log off did then reveal the newly created Administrator account icon.

We need some feedback now.

 

I don't see how the Administrator account can be your account, I believe it's the one created by the net user command, and is the account we now need to use to change the ownership of your old folders.

If you don't accept that, and believe you named your own user account Administrator, then we have a bit of a problem here as we can't safely replicate that situation.

I suggest you log in to the Administrator account and see if you can navigate in Windows Explorer to your old user files - the ones you aren't able to access, and initially just look in the folder Properties > Security tab and without changing anything at all see if you can navigate through to find who is stated to be the owner.

I have to be away for an hour or so but will be back to see any feedback you may have.

 

Thank you for your help so far. I believe that what I have done is made the administrator account my default account (And yes, I did give it the name 'Administrator'). In the process, I may have deleted all of the files from my old account. However, I'm still confused about how some files are still present under c:\Users\myoldusername. Maybe it stopped before it was able to delete everything?

 

mmm...we need somehow to get back to a state of normality - your user account with (limited) admin rights, and a separate Administrator account with (almost) unlimited rights. We could simply reverse the net user command, substituting no for yes, but we have no idea what situation would then ensue as you believe that is also your user account.

In your situation I would first take an image of the system as it now is and store the image on an external drive. Then reverse the net user command to remove the admin account and explore where that left me. If the position was hopeless I would then have to decide whether to restore the present situation via the image or go for a reinstall. Not the happiest of choices I admit, as your old files are still inaccessible - if they exist at all.

Before doing anything I would wait to see if sach2 has any input to this. He is a bit of a ferret with this sort of thing and usually catches his prey