“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have permissi

“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have permission to access the item.

The similar threads do not appear to offer a solution to my situation. I read for hours trying to find something but everything I found either can't run or doesn't work. Please help me if you can. I at my wits end. I need some software on this machine that is specialized software I use in my work and has a licenses installed by the application program. I have a chance to do a job using this software and I haven't had a pay check for a very long time due to the economy. But because of an issue with the computer this software is installed on, I can't use that computer and therefore the software.

I am running win XP home edition SP2 on a power spec PC and have logged on as an administrator user in safe mode.

My desktop computer was running ok and then the power went out. After the power came back up, it would not boot into windows and I get a message telling me to start the recovery console and to try to repair windows. I did and that didn’t work. So I checked on the Microsoft site and found the procedure “Guided Help to recover a corrupted registry that prevents Windows XP from starting” This procedure has three steps 1. Copy the five registry files to a backup location and then copy the files from the repair folder to the system folder, 2. Copy the five registry files from a restore snapshot to a temp location and rename them, 3. Then copy the renamed files to the system folder.



So I ran the first step of this procedure which copied over the backup binary registary files and got the PC to boot into windows. I was not able to run step two or three because there were no restore points to get a backup binary file from. The system restore was not on before thge crash. In addition, all of the former user accounts were gone and only the OEM accounts were present. Because of this I don’t have access to anything including running the user setup in control panel. I get a message that “Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have permission to access the item.”
”

I found the procedure for taking ownership, booted into safe mode, logged on as an administrator, and took ownership of the files to the administrator account. I also gave full control permission to all of the accounts I could find (owner, owner creator, administrator, etc) I still received the error messages. I downloaded a utility program that can reset permissions that was recommended but if I try to run any programs I get the error above. I can’t run Hijack or MGtools in full or safe mode even though it is owned by the administrator and has full permissions to all other users. I can open the control panel but if I click on anything I get the same message above. I also can’t start anything like reg edit.

Although I don’t have a restore point, I did find what appears to be a registry backup (*.reg) that was made prior to the problem. It is named computer’s_name_registary_backup.reg. But I’m not sure how to use that to restore anything. I have access to other XP computers I could work with. How can I proceed to get my PC back?

 

Re: “Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have perm

Someone suggested to login to the system user account which should have access to everything. The procedure they have involves running something from the command line which I don't have access to even in safe mode. Can someone suggest another way to do it?