XP+trouble+with+old+My+Documents.

XP trouble with old My Documents.

You may find that after re‐installing XP ( Whether Home or Pro ) you can not access your old My Documents

Access is denied Why ? it is the old business of protecting personal files from the eyes of others and XP is only doing it’s job.

When you reinstall the operating system, all the old user accounts are wiped out.

Even, when you create new accounts with the same name as the old ones, or even if youʹre using the built in Administrator account.

The accounts are recognized by XP as different accounts. ( Someone else’s )

Therefore you are no longer the owner of the My Documents folder and its files.

However donʹt despair.

Although there is no way to get the old accounts back, you can take ownership of a file or folder.

Here is how to do it :‐

Log on with an account that has administrative privileges.

In XP Home, you need to start in Safe Mode.

In XP Pro, simple File Sharing needs to be disabled.

In Windows Explorer, go to the My Documents folder and Right Click it.

Select Properties.

In the Properties dialog box, click the Security tab

__**Note :‐**__

It will not display in Home Version if youʹre not in Safe Mode

It will not display in Pro Version if Simple File Sharing is enabled.

Click the Advanced button.

Click the Owner tab.

In ʺChange ownership toʺ Select the User Account you want to use to access the folder.

Check the box that says ʺReplace owner on subcontainers and objects.ʺ

Click OK twice to exit the dialog boxes.

__**Sad Note:‐**__

If you were using XP Pro and you had encrypted the files in My Documents with EFS.

You will not be able to open them, even if you own them.

That is unless you had saved the EFS encryption certificate to a different location

For example to a floppy or USB drive or a separate partition before you reinstalled XP.