Error when trying to access Explorer.exe

Noodz

Honorable
Sep 25, 2013
14
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10,510
I was playing around with user accounts last night in order to move my Users folder to a different hard drive, in the end I ended up just moving the Appdata\Local folder. However when I logged in this morning I can no longer access windows explorer, the control panel, or my computer (and probably a lot of other things).

When trying to access explorer I get an Explorer.exe error (Windows cannot access the specificed device, path, or file.
You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item), I get the same error when trying to access Computer and the Control Panel (the message is the same with Control Panel but the error is {26EE068-A00A-9371-BEB064C98683})

I have tried edited permissions through c:\windows\registration and noticed that the Current Owner is set to Administrators (John-PC\Administrators) rather than the account i'm logged into John (John-PC\John), I tried taking ownership but still had the same problems.
And when I try to apply changes to some of the permissions i get another error 'Error Applying Security. An error occurred while applying security information to: c:\windows\registration\CRMlog'

I can't create a new account as I get the same Explorer.exe error.

I tried doing a system restore but get an error when i try that, 'System Restore does not appear to be functioning correctly on this system. A Volume Shadow Copy Service component encountered an unexpected error', although system restore worked last night.

At this point I'm beginning to think that a format and re-install is probably the easiest thing although i'd obviously like to avoid that if possible.

Any help you can give would be much appreciated.

 
Try booting to Safe Mode when your PC starts > F8 and boot with Safe Mode.
Then try performing a System Restore.

Sometimes it doesn't like being used in normal Windows.
 
I just tried to run a system restore from safe mode but received the same error.
I think i'm just going to do a re-install, the only thing on my C: drive is the OS so it's probably the easiest way to fix it.
Thanks for your help.
 
I did a clean install of Win 7 and it fixed the problem. I then moved the location of the Appdata\Local folder to a different drive (using the properties, Location tab) and the problems came back (although System restore worked this time.

So that's what the problem was.

The question now is how can i move this folder without causing these problems?

The reason I wanted to move this folder in the first place is that it was taking up a lot of space (50gb).
 

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