The hell I have experienced these last 24h:

1. Windows 7 installation hosed after bluetooth driver install.
2. Attempting to recover using restore points via "Repair" on the bootable Win7 installation CD.
3. Attempting to go back one day in the restore points. No joy.
4. Attempting to go back two days in the restore points. No joy.
5. Attempting to go back one week in the restore points.
6. Stil no joy. Windows won't boot. Apparently something is REALLY hosed.

And then it hits me -

1. PANIC - the restore points somehow reverted DATA files to their older versions! Word, Powerpoint, SPSS, etc document versions are all one week old now.
2. Using the "freshest" restore point.
3. Failed to restore yesterday's restore point!!!
4. I am stuck at old versions of the data!!!
5. Booting KNOPPIX, mounting NTFS partition as read-only under KNOPPIX. Checking.
6. Nope, the data files are still the one week old versions.
7. Booting Win7 CD, Recovery console - Cmd prompt - navigating - yep, data files are still one week old.
8. Removing the drive, mounting it under other Win7 installation.
9. Still old data.
10. Running NTFS undelete on the drive (read-only scan), searching for file created yesterday.
11. Not found.

Despair.

At this point, idea: I will install a brand new Windows installation, keeping the old one in Windows.old (default behaviour of Windows installs).

I boot the new install, I go to my C:\Data\ folder, I choose "Restore previous versions", click on yesterday's date, and click open...

YES! It works!

I can see the latest versions of my files (e.g. from yesterday). Thank God.

And then, I try to view the files under the "yesterday snapshot-version" of c:\Users\MyAccount\Desktop ...

And I get "Permission Denied" as soon as I try to open "Users\MyAccount". I make sure I am an administrator. No joy.

Apparently, the new Windows installation does not have access to read the "NTFS snapshots" or "Volume Shadow Snapshots" of my old Windows account!

Cross-installation permissions? I need to somehow tell the new Windows install that I am the same "old" user... So that I will be able to access the "Users\MyAccount" folder of the snapshot of my old user account.

Help?