Documents and Settings folder missing

[pegasus [mvp]]

"Paul" <paul@paul.com> wrote in message
news:u816zunrJHA.3792@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Hey, I've got a computer that I'm working on for a friend. They got the
> missing hal.dll error. Tried restoring the file but could not boot into
> safe mode. Anyway, before doing a repair I'm trying to back up their
> documents. I've got their laptop drive as a slave in my computer. I can
> see everything but "Documents and Settings". I have checked the "show
> hidden files and folders" box but it's still not there. They were running
> XP SP2. I'm running XP SP3. They had a password on their user account.
>
> I noticed that they didn't have a boot.ini file so I put one there using
> the generic setting, there is no other OS installed. I replaced their
> hall.dll file with mine and still no change.
>
> I booted up in ERD Commander 2007, reset all permissions, performed a
> system file scan/repair and it repaired 3 files one of which was just a
> help file, the other two didn't seem like anything that would be a big
> deal. I performed a ERD System Restore and just restored the last action
> and that didn't help.
>
> I am at a stopping point.
>
> How can I get to their Documents and Settings folder so I can backup all
> their stuff or fix this problem?
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Paul

Perhaps the folder no longer exists? Here is how you can find out for sure:
- Boot into ERD Command.
- Type these commands:
cd "c:\Documents and Settings"
md "c:\Documents and Settings"
What reponse do you get in each case?

[pegasus [mvp]]

"Paul" <paul@paul.com> wrote in message
news:ulWkCwHsJHA.4648@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Well, I finally found it. One of the things I did during all this is run
> a chkdsk. When I did it found index errors. I had seen the folders
> found.000 and found.001 but I've never seen anything useful in those
> folders before. Well guess what? All of the stuff that is normally in
> Documents and Settings was under that folder. I would have never thought
> it would be there. I discovered this by adding Folder Size from
> Sourceforge so I could see the sizes of folders.
>
> Thanks for taking the time to help me.

This is a first one for me too! Thanks for the feedback.