SOLVED Can I recover my "Pictures" folder ?

[chopperaddict]

I just had my W10 PC decide it would never boot again, at least not with it's current boot disk, saying something about INIT_DATA_MISSING it said. So I had to buy a new Internal Hard disk, find my W10 DVD and reinstall W10 all over again.

Problem is I had loads of images I use in Photoshop (or rather USED to use) because I lost them all on the faulty drive. They were all in the default "Pictures" pseudo folder, but although I have reconnected the old drive (Thanks to SATA), and it is all there, (it is just something to do with the boot that failed) but I cannot find a way to get into the standard Username\PICTURES folder for the original user, as access to it seems to be squirrelled away in the old Registry. (This user had Admin rights)

Anyone know how I can get around this, I would really love to get all my images back, and indeed, my Username\Documents folder as well. I am comfy editing the Registry if that is what it takes ?

 

[bassfisher6522]

This is exactly why I have a cloud backup and a off site hard copy back up. A 2nd HDD that I use in a HDD docking station. That said you could try some 3rd party software to attempt to recover said files.

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[chopperaddict]

You are correct of course, and I have a spare SSD drive I should have used, but, as they say, hindsight is a wonderful thing.... But I didn't backup my data.

However, I found out about a thing called "Take Ownership" which is a really smart registry "hack" that let me add a "Take Ownership" entry to my context menus. Now, I just use this on any folder, including the ones M$ stop us accessing like Documents and settings, and let the registry entry go to work. It runs up a powershell instance, and then screams thru changing all the permissions to the current owner in my new W10 installation and presto, I can get at them all again. - Wonderful.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Great! Glad you got it sorted.