Recovering files from laptop HD access denied

[Radical789]

I have removed a good hard drive from a dead laptop and need to copy the personal files from My Documents for the only user on the system. I think the operating system was Vista (probably home premium).
I placed the HD in a dock and plugged into my PC via USB. I could view the contents however, when I tried to get down into Documents and Settings and the user's Documents folder access was denied.
What can I do to get around this problem so I can recover their files?

 

[Modelworks]

You need to be administrator on your system and then change the permissions on the folders.
You can also use the Take ownership option that you can add to your right click menu by adding this to the registry :
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ership-to-explorer-right-click-menu-in-vista/

Right click the folder and pick Take Ownership

 

[Elixer]

You could also use a 'live boot CD/DVD' to access files...

 

[Radical789]

Thanks for the suggestions, I will try them out. I know that the user already had Administrative rights but these other work arounds should do the trick.
Thanks again!

 

[Radical789]

Also, the PC that we were looking at the files with had Win XP Pro on it and the laptop hard drive was attached as an external drive. So the "Take Ownership" is an XP operating system taking ownership of the files on a drive with the Vista OS on it. Hopefully that won't create another issue.

 

[elconejito]

You should be able to just take ownership. You might also have to give your user full access (read/write, etc).