Hello,

I am running Windows XP Pro SP1 on an Inspiron 8200 and I seem to have lost access to my all users/documents folder. Let me give you the whole story. The default account on the computer - i.e. the one I created when I first set it up - allowed me to connect to my network workgroup for my at home network. When I took the computer to college however, I changed the workgroup (via the Computer Name tab in the My Computer properties) to the college domain in order to have network privileges at school. However, when I changed the domain, I did not create a new user account with my college domain's username and password - I simply changed the domain, restarted, and logged in as myself. One thing I changed however was the target for the My Documents folder - instead of saving my files to C:\Documents and Settings\collegeid, I wanted to save my files to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents, so that I would have access to the documents from both accounts. I could access these files just fine.

Now, recently, I went back home with my computer. At home, we had switched over to a wireless network, and once I returned home, I sat down to set up my computer to access the new wireless network (but with the same workgroup name as the first wired home network). That worked all well and good. However, in fiddling with the network settings, I at one point logged off as my college id account name, and logged in as my old default user account. As soon as I did this, I could no longer access the All Users/Documents folder. It gave me an error that this folder is inaccessible and access is denied. I thought the problem would correct itself when I got back to school and logged in as my college id user name. However, now I am back, and this strategy has worked to no avail. The All Users/Documents folder remains inaccessible. More troublesome is that I can access everything else in the All Users folder - the Favorites, the templates, etc. Even more worrying is that the All Users/Documents folder was nearly 8 GB in size, and now that I have lost access to it, it is eating up a sizeable chunk of my hard drive without even letting me access it for deletion. The folder contained all my music, movies, and all my documents, and although 99.9% was backup for material I had a hard copy of, this shouldn't be something that isn't recoverable. I am convinced that I goofed up som security or sharing privileges for this particular folder, but I have no idea how to fix it. One important note: Contrary to what some people have suggested to me, I have not deleted the folder - I knew the remaining disk space on my harddrive before and after I lost access to the folder, and it has not changed, meaning the folder still exists.

Here is what I have tried. Both my original default account, and my college id 'account' are administrator-level - still no access. I logged in as the 'Administrator' to no avail. I tried System Restore to see if I could regain access from an earlier system state - no dice. Now I am seriously contemplating a full format reinstall of Windows to regain my hard disk space. However, there must be an easier way. If anyone has any idea what I could or should do next, your help would be greatly appreciated. Any suggestions are welcomed. Thank you VERY much in advance!