Author Topic: Unlocking password protected directories (Read 1270 times)

JB88 · « **Reply #15 on:** February 10, 2008, 05:30:22 PM »

ive also been told that if you create a user account with the same name and password as the old account that you can access it...but i have not tried this yet.

Thruster · « **Reply #16 on:** February 10, 2008, 06:37:31 PM »

Mea Culpa

Sorry, thanks SD. I didn't register and I got lost in the chase.

JB, that's about it. But there were some other boxes to check and I had to assign different admin permissions. Put a gun to my head and I probably couldn't do it again. I had tried just establishing another account with the same password but apparently each machine creates a unique cpid or something and the device needs to be told it can grant it access.

All's cool now, I just have to unlock the old desk top and grab a few stray files.

Thanks all for the input.

JB88 · « **Reply #17 on:** February 10, 2008, 07:03:39 PM »

its a real pain. been through it.

trial and error every time for me.

glad it worked out for you.

deSelys · « **Reply #18 on:** February 11, 2008, 04:32:15 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by Chairboy
That wasn't his problem, his issue was that the directories were encrypted.

He never said that the directories were encrypted*. It was just XP marking directories as 'private'... As JB88 said, creating an user with the same name/password combination gives you access to the files. (at least with XP Home edition, I'm not sure this works with XP Pro...)

*even if they are, it's relatively easy to break the password because XP encryption isn't very good (unless a long complex password is used)

Thruster · « **Reply #19 on:** February 11, 2008, 06:01:05 AM »

The first thing I did was create a new account/password to match the old one. No luck. O/S is XP Home sp2.

Had it been that easy, trust me I would not have bothered you all. But I'm glad I did. The advice I got started me on a new tangent and I located the fix. I tend to be a pretty militant do-it-yourselfer and I was not eager to have a tech mess with my data.

My fault for not taking my own advice and letting the backup slide for so long.

deSelys · « **Reply #20 on:** February 11, 2008, 09:21:24 AM »

That's weird, I did the very same thing 2 weeks ago: I was installing a new SATA HDD in my box and I thought 'what the heck, I'll make a fresh XP install'. The original install is almost 4 yrs old and little problems were showing up now and then after a lot of game installs and removals. That also allows me to dedicate my old HDD to Linux and keep the Windows MBR untouched in case GRUB decides to mess things up.

I partition the new HDD and make an extra FAT 32 partition where I copy all my user files (and savegames) because I was convinced that I wouldn't be able to access the old user directories (marked as private).

I install XP on the new HDD and create 1 administrator user and 1 restricted user. Both names are identical as those of the old install. I try to access the old directories and I'm not surprised to see that I'm locked out. However, when I gave the same password as before to both account and when I set up both 'My Documents' as private, I was able to open the old directory for each user respectively.

It's good to know that it doesn't always work that way and that I shouldn't rely on it. Maybe in my case XP Home SP2 gave to the new users the same CPID as before.