XP ...The Big Crash

[LED]

Neighbors Mobo is fried but the Hard Drive is fine so I'm trying to retrieve some Documents and stuff for them...I can not get the Hard Drive to Boot up Windows XP with any of my Puters but I can daisy chain it as one Slave behind one of my Puters...Problem is the Documents and Settings is not accesable {ie. Access is Denied}...I assume because there was a Password needed to enter XP with their old non working MoBo/PC ...any Help on how I would enter in there would be appreciatted (I have the Password) so I can burn some stuffs onto CD for them?

TIA

 

[xtknight]

Do a full chkdsk on the hard disk then try to access "Documents and Settings". I don't think it should ever show access denied, unless he encrypted it, but even then I'm not sure what would happen or if you'd be able to see the disk at all. In my experience, I've gotten lots of "access is denied" errors from problems in the file table of the partition. In the case of encryption, you may be able to goto the XP recovery console, select that partition at recovery console startup, and enter his admin password to decrypt files. Worst thing you can do if it was encrypted is to reinstall Windows on it though. Not a good idea, and you can say bye to your data, even if you have the original password. I believe the encryption takes other installation-specific information into account.

Worst case scenario you may have to do "bootcfg /scan" in the recovery console to find his Windows installation before adding it to the list in recovery console. This is only if chkdsk doesn't work though and if you know the data was encrypted. Please try chkdsk before all this.

 

[MrChad]

Have you tried assuming ownership of the files in Documents and Settings?

 

[LED]

Thanks for the replies...tried to change the Folder to shared Documents with a no go and because this is kind of a rush manuever ...I just took everything (Doc's and stuffs they wanted) and backed it up...Plan on reinstallig XP on the new Mobo then afterwards putting in the Documents I backed up...a