Thanks Madmonkey. Sorry about being away from keyboard so long (son needed his computer). 1. I tried MbrFix again, same sad result as before. Will try again, now extracting by use of ZipGenius (haven´t used that program for years, did use his intital release years ago, though). 2. saving files by safe mode: i first tried that via son´s computer (XP home), safe mode and adm. rights - and it did not work. Then I tried the same procedure on my daughters comp, XP profesional, which I had changed from FAT32 to NTFS just as with my laptop. Still did not work. Booted into safe mode, files were found, the chosen files seemed to be copied .... but did not copy. All I got was empty folders. The big problem here is me having used the make private function on he important files i wanted to protect (those files I now need have back). Files can only be transferred to another computer by use of the embedded file transfer function in XP, i.e. a working system. I did however manage to save all documents in My documents - I had not bothered to make them protected. All of the important files (current jobs) were stored on desktop (how silly of me!) ...and documents and settings cannot be accessed via another computer, neither by normal mode or by safe mode with administrator rights. Alas, far too secured. Now I know why IT-folks gate that Private Folders program and why Microsoft stopped providing it... I checked to see if I could copy some of the hidden system files from my daughter´s computer to my laptop - but that did not work, either. Systems so different. They only have the OS and file system in common. That is why I took file by file from the CD (i386 files) and fed them back to the laptop via the floppy. But ,with the boot sector gone, that just did not work. So, I am still on level 0 here...

Karin, you soooooooo close, it's just an ownership problem now. You may need to follow the above instructions for the sub files and folders (such as Desktop) you want to copy also. See them, make sure you can open what you need, and then copy. You can do this Karin, I know you can, stay with me! I don't think there's any chance of salvaging the parition with it converted also, so this is the way forward. Once you have checked and double checked what you got what you need, the last thing to do is reinstall.

Thanks for keeping my spriits up! I go in-between the deep dark valleys and the high mountains here, spiritwise (laughs). I´ll fish the harddisk out of the laptop again and connect it to another computer once more, and see what can be done. The major problem is the file protection that prevents ownership to be taken over via another computer. It´s the MBOX storing the Thunderbird emails, olus the desktop files, I need transfer. The rest may go. I have googled around to see if I could find 3rd party software to undo file protection but, have had no luck so far. Do you know of any?

oh, and about NTFStoDOS: Both CHKDSKG and CHKDSK /f are valid, the first being Aviras own twist to the tool to the XP chkdsk, whilst the common /f parameter can also be reached from NTFStoDOS. About file protection: I have used both the XP pro file protection PLUS Microsofts Private Folders. Double trouble!

Yep, that's why you have to do every file and folder individually. If they were just private folders, ticking the box "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects", would have replaced of the sub folders and files at once.

But your disk is now FAT32 instead of NTFS right? So this means that your partition is more easily accessible using say a normal Windows 98 boot disk (Bootdisk.Com - Free NTFS Boot disk, Boot Disk, Windows boot disk, XP Bootdisk, DOS Bootdisk). You should now be able to run scandisk instead of chkdsk using this bootup floppy. What I'm worried about if you want to try and repair this disk, is that because the conversion process would not have copied the startup files necessary to boot on a FAT32 partition, they would still be NTFS bootup files. (It would have ignored it not being the main disk). We could copy these manually, and should work in *theory*, I've not actually done this before. I've got a test PC I could try it on to be absolutely sure if you would like me to?

No, the file system is still NTFS (only the 2MB RAM sector is FAT32, the tiny D: partition), Bootdisks for FAT32 files are of no use. Scandisk cannot be used ("bad command"), nor any other common DOS tools. So, conversion isn´t done...I don´t even know how to revert the FS back to FAT32, just the other way. I assumed it was impossible... Would it be wiser to have the file system changed to FAT32?

I dont know if this would work or not, but it wont cost much to try it. If the files are just protected, but not encrypted, one of the live linux distributions may allow you to retrieve them. I use Knoppix, and Puppy Linux mostly and they work well, but ive never tried them in a situation exactly like this.