Ponch

Best way would have been to move your data to a 2nd partition (create one if needed) and reformat the 1st one to install a new XP.

I do it all with nLite, in nLite order, with no problem.

Have you read the thread before posting ?

Is that in Internet Explorer ? Do you get an error message when you try to delete them ?

1) enter BIOS at boot to check wether your hard disk is still properly detected. 2) if it is not, open the case and check both cables (power and signal, double check signal at both end) 3) when it is, if it still doesn't boot normally, boot from a cd or a floppy to check what partitions are showing. 4) report.

Wow... you built a laptop ? Bad news is that -your software is legally bound to the HP so we cannot really discuss that here. -depending on what's on your rescue DVD, it might be pretty difficult to build an XP disc with it. If it's just an image of the drive, with no I386 folder, you are in trouble. But again, I'm afraid we cannot really discuss how to get over that problem. Others feel free to contradict me.

1)Log as Administrator or an account that has Admin rights, 2)Check in Folders View Options (in Windows Explorer) that "Use Simple File Sharing" is unticked. 3) right-click your old account folder and check the Security tab, check for advanced settings the Owner pane, set yourself as the new folder owner. 4)Give yourself rights on that folder and make sure subfolders inherit rights. That should do it.

Some readings for your long winter nights on the 2nd page of this very forum. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=61384

If you have the possibility to make a BartPe cd, the plugin for Testdisk is quite easy to make (it takes 3 files from the Testdisk for Win32).

You're joking, right ? What forum do you think you're posting ? You can use nLite for that one.

I don't get this. 1)How do you get to User accounts if you can't go to Control Panel ? 2)Administrator doesn't show under User Accounts, it is normal, it doesn't mean the account has been deleted. 3) Your son must have used an account to make "a" change. Given the fact there is no other account, he can't have deleted the administrator under "administrator". I think it's just a matter of not seing the administrator "picture" at welcome screen anymore. Press CtrlAltDel twice at Welcome Screen or boot in Safe Mode. Or ask your son what he's done.

If you have a floppy drive and a dos boot disk, you can try Testdisk for DOS. It does work. You just need to recover the 1st partition and make it active again (now it's the 2nd that's active and detected as unknown file format, that's why your computer won't boot). Do NOT format that 1st partition. If your XP cd is without service pack (is it ?), you'll have trouble with your partitions that are over the 137Gb, I think that's why your 2nd and 3rd partitions were detected as unknown. Then you modified the 3rd one and made it active. That got you totally lost.

There's nothing wrong with that, you don't really need one to run Windows.

Logical Disk Manager from Hardware Support ?

VirtualBox only runs in 32bit.

so he had admin rights to do that ?

Symantec says they do include some SATA drivers. I'd check that first. +BartPE runs from a bootable CD (it sort of is the OS), "portable" applications still need an OS to run (some might also run under BartPE).

In Virtual box, the VM runs in a vdi file, I guess it is impossible to have a 3Gig file inside the virtual box as the including file still is limitted by the resident file system.

I think this one (found in nLite.inf) HKLM,"SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce","nlite_post_08",0x00020000,"nhelper rd /q /s """"%SystemRoot%\Srchasst"""""

Yeah, all old members are mad or wrong. Nuhi as well, they don't have a clue what nLite is about You're the man ! But drop the caps.

What is the partition setup ?

I had the same problem yesterday on one of our user's desktop (this must be the 6th in about a year). The file was there (about 4.5Meg) and I could move it and copy it back so I don't know what was corrupt to it. I solved it by typing "chkdsk /p" in the recovery console. I wonder why this /p option is not available in normal XP (and then in Bart PE for instance). Maybe it needs some file from the cd, maybe it would make it too easy.

Tried bootable GDISK ? Of course you need enough difference between datasize and partition size. Defragging before might help also.

1.4beta has been out since quite a while now, it would be strange for such a bug to remain unnoticed. What about checking your settings ?

In fact you can log into Vista, use Disk Management to shrink the 1st partition and if you get 10Gig free you can install Ubuntu in the unpartitionned space.