Quote Originally Posted by Relic28
... I am trying to gain access to the protected administrator account to back up several files .....I was able to access the protected files no problem but could NOT copy them. I've checked both hard drive partitions made them read and writable and under devices un-checked read only. .... Is it because they are both NTFS?....
I'm not at all clear what you mean by "protected" files. If you have some form of encryption enabled then you may not be able to recover these files, and you would likely be very upset if the encryption that you were using to protect files was easily bypassed by Knoppix, particularly if someone stole your computer and accessed your "protected" data with Knoppix.

If the files are not encrypted, then you should be able to get to them with Knoppix, at least if your attempts to write to NTFS didn't do further damage. Just why you were trying to write to NTFS isn't clear, sounds to me like you would still just have another copy on the bad disk (if it worked at all), but maybe you were trying to use an external NTSF partitioned drive.

My suggestion would be to try any of the following:

1) Boot knoppix on the failed system. On another computer boot windows and install an FTP server (there are many free and trial version ones on the web). Connect both computers by a local network and transfer the files that you want by FTP, using Konquror under Knoppix as an FTP client.

2) Plug a FAT formatted flash drive into the dead system. Boot Knoppix. Find the desktop icon of the FAT partitioned flash drive and use the right click menu to make it writeable (exact choices vary slightly depending on Knoppix version). If you can't figure out how to make the drive writeable from the GUI, use the mount command from a shell, see man mount for details; that works just as well. Open the now writable flash drive and drag and drop the files that you want to save to it.

c) Pull the hard drive out of the dead system and install it in another computer as a second drive. Move the files with Windows, no Knoppix needed.

IV) Don't have a second computer or a FAT formatted drive? Get another hard disk for you computer. Reinstall Windows (install XP is you were using Vista). Once the install is up and working, install your old drive as a second drive (pay attention to the master/slave settings if using IDE rather tham SATA). You should be able to access the second drive and move desired files to the new drive.