Sometimes windows XP users profile becomes corrupt and windows creates directory named username.000 or username.pc-name with new user settings, my documents and so on. So it seemes, that you loose all e-mails, al my documents and everything what was on desktop. Don’t panic, there is possibility, that old users profile is stil in C:\Documents and settings directory. Just to ensure open Documents and Settings folder and look for your username dir. If it is still here, you’ll need to edit registry to point to your old dir. Login as Administrator, open registry editor (backup your whole registry before!) by pressing start -> run, type regedit and press enter.
Now browse to KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
There are all users SID’s (user Security Identifiers) they looks something like this S-X-X-XX-XXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXX.
Now you need to identify, which SID is yours. Look at “ProfileImagePath” value and find “%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\username.000″ or “%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\username.pc-name” value.
Change it to “%SystemDrive%\Documents and Settings\username” (just change to your old profile’s path).
Reboot pc and try to login to that user. If everything is ok, you should login to your account and find all your old data.
Linux has filesystem support for windows (fat,ntfs and so on), mac, and lots of others. Whats about windows? Microsoft didn’t make ext2fs reiserfs filesystem supports. But there are several solutions how to access linux partition from windows. First which I tried is explore2fs. Its simple, something filemanager-style browser. It supports reading ext2fs (also ext3fs because its the same but with journal). You can simply select export file from context menu and save it to your windows drive. There is screenshot:
I like this app because its small, no install needed and does simple file saving routine from linux. (Hate to reboot to linux just to save one file:). You can download it here: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm
If you need more functionality there are drivers writen for windows. One of them, which I tested – EXT2IFS. This driver after instalation shows linux partitions as ususal windows disks. So you have more disks, and use them as windows partitions. You can download it from here: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ext2ifs.htm#Download
ReiserFs support (didn’t tested by myself):
http://p-nand-q.com/e/reiserfs.html
http://www.it.fht-esslingen.de/~zimmerma/software/ltools.html
Be careful when connecting to Windows XP PC old 14″ CRT monitors. It seemed, that when loading winxp (shows winxp logo and progress bar) there is bigger refresh rate than 60HZ (Not sure). Because when I set to WinXP 800×600 @ 60HZ two old monitors almost fried when windows was booting. Those monitors was connected to older PC’s earlier with win98 800×600 @ 75HZ. So If you want WinXP – buy at least newer 15″ monitors.
