My 4 year old pc recently died (the motherboard was fried or something), so I salvaged the hard disk and stuck it as a slave drive on another PC. That was fine, but i realised that I couldn't access my MSWindows "Documents and Settings" folder that is on the old hard disk, as I had previously password protected the account. Is there any way I can access it from this new PC? I still recall my previous account's password... so no issues there. Both the old and new PCs are running WinXP, in case that info is relevant.

Any help? Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by Kiffer: Aug 4 2007, 11:21 PM

try booting into safe mode and change the folder's permission.

i can't remember the exact way i did it, but i was having the same situation as well. xp home unable to access files in xp pro hdd. what i did was boot up in safe mode, log in as administrator and change the file / folder permission.

This post has been edited by Praetor: Aug 4 2007, 04:02 PM

hmmm, never encounter this type of problem before. anyone can help him ?

this only apply to xp home edition iirc.
pro edition no need to enter safe mode to takeover the account privilege.

look like a quite difficult prob..

Ha, thanks to you fellas, I've managed to find my way in. I'll post here what I did, so that anyone else who comes across this problem can follow along:

- went into Safe mode (I couldn't do it in normal mode), and i browsed to the folder, right-clicked and called up the Properties dialog box.
- in the Properties Dialog Box, I went to the "Security" Tab, and clicked on "advanced".
- This brought me to the Advanced Security Options dialog box. I selected the "Owner" Tab
- On the Owner Tab, i selected the checkbox for the "replace owner on subcontainers and objects" option.
- click on "OK". A dialog box will appear telling you that you do not have permission to read the contents of the folder and asking if you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control. Click "yes"
- Windows then "transfered" the files of that folder into my control. Woohoo full power!
- that's about it. Went back to normal mode and I could wander around in the folder, no probs.

Hey! A bit unfair, though. This means if someone were to steal my harddisk, they can hijack it and take full control over the files using this method! Not that there are any government sensitive info or (more commonly, these days) some girl's scandalous photos or videos in my hard disk, but still...

This post has been edited by Kiffer: Aug 4 2007, 05:06 PM