WinXP - need full access to Administrator folder on my old HDD

[Cpt. Duke]

My old setup -

Athlon 1 Ghz
Abit KT7A
512 mb SDRAM
120 GB HDD

was in awful shape, crashing even in the bios(!) This was replaced yesterday by -

Athlon64 3 Ghz
MSI Neo Platinum
1 GB DDR
40 GB HDD (temp)

I installed the hardware and tried to boot XP Pro on the 120 GB drive. No success, crashes and reboots in an infinite loop. Unfortunately I was not able to create a Ghost image or take other preliminary measures as my old setup was crashing so frequently. (Im not even sure what component the culprit was, but I'm thinking it was the CPU.)

Anyway, I did a fresh install of XP on an extra 40 GB drive I had sitting around (with the 120 drive pulled from the system.) This was successful.

I now have both hard drives hooked up, the 40 as the master, and the 120 as the slave. My hope is to backup / restore everything on the 120, then format it, and ghost the 40 to the 120.

My main problem is that I have a lot of important info on the desktop folder of my old XP installation (E:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\desktop)
The problem is I cannot access the Administrator folder ... "access denied"

Any suggestions? I tried buring the folder to CD and this failed. Can I access this via Command Line?
Your advice will be much appreciated. In fact, if someone is able to successfully help me out with this, I can send you $10. Hey, I'm despertate!

thanks,
Ryan

 

[Mutilator]

1 option would be to boot to Safe Mode... then go in to your C:\Documents & Settings folder and find the profile you're trying to get in to. If it still won't let you in (probably won't) then you'll need to right click and go in to the folder security. You'll want to take ownership of the folder and all subfolders (there's a checkbox for this somewhere).
I'd give you step by step instructions but I can't right now. It's something like right click on the folder - properties - security - advanced button - owner tab - take ownership - check replace owner on subfolders box

 

[Cpt. Duke]

Thank you Mutilator, your trick worked. Never thought of going into Safe Mode ...
Please PM me your address if you'd like the cash : )