Windows 7 Access denied to c:\ and all folders

[GasBandit]

I'm trying to help a coworker out with their Dell Inspiron netbook. They loaned it to their son and it came back riddled with viruses. I'm doing what I can to clear it out but my ability is somewhat hampered by the fact that the only account on the system has apparently lost its access rights to C:.

I've tried booting into repair mode and using takeown /a /f to restore ownership, but it's not had any effect.

If there was a restore image to take it back to manufacturer's state, I'd have used it long ago. Unfortunately I only ever seem to run into the dell systems that don't have a factory recovery image. Why they wouldn't put one on a system that has no optical drives is beyond me. I can't even run anything off a flash drive because of the same problem.

I've tried booting into MiniXP from a USB bootable version of Hiren's boot CD, but there's only so much cleaning up I seem to be able to do from there, and almost 0 damage fixing.

Anybody got any other ideas? Getting to the point where the only thing I can think of is to copy a windows install CD to the bootable USB and reinstall windows manually. Naturally the dell support website is completely unhelpful and doesn't even supply drivers for this service tag, beyond a touch monitor that it doesn't come with.

 

[strawman]

For all the time you've spent, I'd say booting to a USB windows install is your easiest and fastest way out of this mess.

 

[GasBandit]

And that's gonna be a fun mess because I don't see a windows 7 sticker on this bad boy, so I'm gonna have to hoist the jolly roger and hope for the freakin best.

 

[Bowielee]

Definitely sounds like a nuke from orbit situation. It is weird that there's not a Windows key sticker on the laptop. I've never owned a Dell, so I don't know what their general way of providing that is. Most likely it's in a manual for the laptop that they threw away ages ago.

 

[GasBandit]

Found the sticker. It was mounted inside/behind the battery.

 

[ncts_dodge_man]

OEM licenses are now being baked into the BIOS for Win 7 and higher (unsure about Vista).

There are ways to get it to use that OEM license key for activation - I don't remember where I found it, but there are applications that can be used to automatically do it.