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My windows files got corrupted in a way that have prevented me from recovering the system(my laptop came without any OS so it didn't have a built-in recovery option for me to save Windows).

To login to my computer I installed another Windows 10 to another partition but all of my data remains in the corrupted Windows partition. I realize I can at least browse through my data when I run cmd as administrator, but I think what I am trying to accomplish is merging partitions to get all the data to my working Windows partition.

I am really scared of merging the partitions because I fear not being able to turn on my PC afterwards (because of the corrupted Windows installation). And my PC doesn't have enough free space as all of it is used in these 2 partitions;

So if I merge and can't boot Windows again I will need to delete all the partition to free space which means I'll lose all my data.

Long story short, can someone write a concrete solution to my problem to get the data from corrupted Windows partition to working Windows partition safely? (also corrupted Windows partition has more space than working Windows partition, so I won't be able to move all the data if I can't merge partitions. Nevertheless even being able to copy some is a huge help.)

When I try to access from File Explorer, even when I am running it as admin, I can't access to my user's folder. I can from terminal, but if I can't merge partitions, then I need to visually filter what I want to pick to the new system.

While answering please keep in mind that I cannot login to the corrupted Windows (I tried startup repair and fix Windows from dual boot menu and it still didn't work).

Ξένη Γήινος
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Juwan
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1 Answers1

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Windows 10 was running. So if you can get your data (as you said above), put the data on a USB drive. Then reinstall Windows 10 (it will activate itself) and let Windows 10 build the partitions it needs (normally 3). That would be the simplest way and how I would do it.

The Windows you need is the version on the corrupted partition (Home, Pro, etc.)

Most data recovery is easy, but the documents in your USER folder are secured. You will need to take ownership of the USER folder so that you can recover documents from it. Your new, fresh install will build a new user folder (and Account). Once done, you can get the documents from the other user folder.

I assume what I need to do is to find the sudo chown -R equivalent in windows and assign D/users/corrupted user to myself.

There is good information on taking ownership of a Windows 10 folder in this fairly recent SU Post.

How to change ownership of a file in Windows 10

Good luck.