(we do have a backup for the vast majority of this but would be nice to recover “properly” too)

The Mrs ran down the battery on her laptop and, maybe coincidentally, her user profile is shagged

It looked originally like we could access her “my docs” folder via doc&settings so I thought we could recover but it now turns out that’s wrong – I can see it but can’t open it up (“access denied”) even from the admin profile and/or safe mode

Explorer still says her profile exists (& has lots in it) but I can’t open or explore at all. I’ve tried a backup program but that also can’t open it up. I’ve had the drive in my pc but that didn’t work either.

Any tips, or software to try? (not a recovery of deleted files – I’ve tried one & it doesn’t list them (presumably as they’re NOT deleted))

Been thinking (oh dear !)

System restore ?

Delete the user profile – would that then delete all content and allow an undelete, or maybe just leave it all in the folders anyway ?

pah,

– I thought this place had the highest density of IT workers anywhere outside of Microsoft!

Has nobody any ideas ?

I’d run her messed drive as a slave drive on another pc, access her documents and copy across what I needed, sometimes you have to take onwership of the files-Google.

Format her hard drive once I had all the data I needed+reinstall windows etc.

And set her laptop to hibernate or standby at 10% of battery power and tell her to get off lazy backside and plug power cable in.

Unless she was on a train etc. If she was at home watching tv then she needs to have punishment to correct the errors of her ways-get her to make a cake.

cheers zaskar,
I see no problem with any of the above – except that I can’t access her profile’s files when I set it up as a slave (can get to the others, just not “her”)

mmmmmmmm, cake !