External Enclosure, Laptop Hardrive

[Revolution09]

A friend has been having problems with their laptop and I'm not able to boot into Windows to backup files before reformatting, so we bought an external enclosure for the hardrive. Hooked it up, and we can view the files, but can't do anything with them because it says we need computer admin permissions.. any ideas to get around this problem?

 

[mpilchfamily]

Have you tried a repair install with the HDD in the laptop? May be able ot fix the problem or at lest get it to the point where you can back up the information.

 

[Revolution09]

Originally posted by: mpilchfamily
Have you tried a repair install with the HDD in the laptop? May be able ot fix the problem or at lest get it to the point where you can back up the information.

Booting from Windows CD doesn't seem to be an option.. just simply won't work.
I can't get into Windows, after clicking the username to log in it just logs back out right away.

 

[teddyv]

I did this for a friend - it took me a while and some googling but I did manage to pull everything off the dead laptop's drive. I logged in to my machine as admin, plugged in the dead laptop's hard drive using a cheap USB enclosure like this, then transferred the permissions to me. Once I did that, I re-copied everything to a WD 160-gig portable hard drive and my friend used that to repopulate her new laptop. If I remember correctly, it took right-clicking on the files and selecting "properties", then under the "security" tab, resetting to me. At first I had to do this file by file, but then with some googling I found a way to either do it by directory or by selecting multiple files - I cannot remember which unfortunately.

Google it, there are plenty of sites out there that tell you how to do it. OK, first google search I did brought this up:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=9225

Check out the "chandlerjea" response, I believe that is exactly what I did.