\systemprofile\desktop\ "access denied" after sysprep screwup

[ricky23]

Gonna start with specs though they shouldnt apply

i7 2600k @4.6
32gb of gskill 1600mhz 9-9-9-24
3x 7970 ghz editions
asrock z68 extreme 7 gen 3 mobo

boot drive is a 60g corsair ssd with 15 gigs free.
other storage includes a 2tb raid 0 of 2 wd 7200rpm drives
a 250gig 840 evo
a 500gig wd velociraptor (10krpm)

Anyways.

So i was having driver issues, yeah, haha, "amd has shitty drivers" (note the sarcasm). I traced it back to something along the lines of the southbridge drivers were screwy after upgrading from 8.

I decided to run sysprep and generalize the installation to get rid of all the drivers that had been installed prior, as i have done in the past when i had issues with printers and other crap not installing properly.

Well, needless to say, things didnt turn out so hot.

When i rebooted i came up to a black screen. I let it sit for 5 minutes, nothing. Rebooted. Black screen. Rebooted, black screen. Rebooted again and went to have dinner.
ac
Came back and it was at the desktop with the message "Cannot access file system32\config\systemprofile\desktop\" location doesnt exist blah blah

Well apparently thats pretty common and it can be kinda fucksed (shittily fixed) by copying your actual desktop directory to that location.

After doing so through the install flashdrive i had made, i rebooted. Same black screen, so i decided to wait. After about 8-10 minutes it went to a white screen, then about 8-10 minutes later, it came to the desktop, this time saying the same thing, but instead of doesnt exist, it was access denied. Well that should be a simple fix right?

Through a bootable XP disk, i selected the system32\config\ folder and told it to apply its permissions to every child directory/file.

Well now the directory and its subfiles share the same perms as the config folder, which must be working to some extent as the computer is booting, right?

It still comes up to the desktop after 15-20 minutes saying access is denied to the desktop directory.

I cant do anything on that computer as the entire desktop is fucked. Right clicking gives you an empty skinny window (that works) but everything doesnt work inside of it, other than im able to manage to blindly find "add new something to toolbar" which brings up a file explorer, but i cant access config, and i cant access the user folders.

What in the hell am i logged in to, a temporary account?

a lot of windows seems to be broken because of this. The keyboard entirely doesnt work, taskmanager doesnt work, theres no start menu, theres no other menus. Just the recycle bin that doesnt work.

So far ive tried a few dism commands i knew, as well as sfc, and even as a last ditch effort, chkdsk.

from what i can tell, which isnt very much from the current state of the OS, the permissions seem fine? The only thing i could think of is that i dont think trustedinstaller existed back in the days of XP? but the system is in there as full control, the local admin is full control, and i think the user account has full control.

help!

Ill be watching this like a hawk, so if you post, expect an answer in a few minutes.

Thanks!

[ricky23]

Fixed permissions by granting everyone access to the entire drive. Desktop comes up now, but its all shitty and nothing works. I tried to log out though cmd via shutdown -l, but it took me right back to the desktop after 20 minutes. Also get this, the keyboard doesnt even work in the current state its in. May or may not be related to the chipset drivers not being installed.

no administrator program will run, some random programs will, but it really seems like explorer is having a hard time reading some file or something and just isnt saying anything about it. Im going to try enabling boot logging and see what its getting hung at.