After updating, I can't do anything on my PC! Installing and Upgrading Vista Discuss After updating, I can't do anything on my PC! in the Windows Vista forums; Hello, Being a real pioneer at my company, I updated my xp box to Vista Wednesday afternoon, leaving it on through the next morning, because, obviously, it takes hours. When ...

[pb4072]

Hello,
Being a real pioneer at my company, I updated my xp box to Vista Wednesday afternoon, leaving it on through the next morning, because, obviously, it takes hours.

When I came in the next morning, I logged into Vista. It looks beautiful, but, my goodness, I just can't believe what it did to my PC. I'm a domain administrator, so, theoretically, I should have full admin. rights on my box. But, Vista changed my profile from "Documents and Settings" to "Documents." I have no problem with that, but, it didn't move MY profile as it was. It just created a new profile for me. All of the old profile, my documents, etc., etc., are inaccessible, because, the "documents and settings" folder infrastructure is now closed! "Access denied" appears when you try to get into it. What's going on here??

I also can't map any network drives to my servers, which are still in an NT domain.

I can't activate applications, because it says I don't have rights to the directories in which those applications reside!

I'm flabbergasted. This morning I'm going to re-install it, this time not doing an update, but a full blown install, formatting the drive and all. I have enough backup of my stuff. I actually seem to recall that in all updates of Windows, I always do end up just installing it full force instead of updating.

Thanks,
Peter

[felix8406]

You could have access your files through the Administrator Account without the need to reinstall Vista. However, since you have a backup of all the files, I guess doing a clean install won't hurt.

By default, the Administrator account is disabled, but it can be enable.

Right click 'Computer' and chose 'Manage' > Double-click 'Local Users and Groups' > On the right pane click to select the Administrator icon, right-click it and choose Properties > enable Administrator account > Restart PC and sign in to the account.

Note that the Administrator account is disabled for a reason, to safe guard your PC. You should disable it once you get your files in order.

[pb4072]

Thank you!
Well, in my company domain, there is no such thing as the user "Administrator" anymore. It's called "su1000" now. But, I don't see any right-click functionality there to enable it. But, a vendor of mine did send me some information regarding this and I've successfully turned off UAC for now. I understand why Microsoft would do this. It's like a user in UNIX versus a super-user. But, they definitely need to communicate this fully upon installation of Vista. I can't even run my mail program, for gosh sakes! Why should I have to right-click and choose "Run as administrator" for that??

Thanks again.

[Znod]

UAC needs to be able to learn. Given one "allow," it would be nice if it wouldn't bother you on the same thing again.