Solved Unable to access files from previous OS! Please help!

Hi! I own a Toshiba Qosmio x300(running on Vista home premium x64) and recently my oldest laptop, HP (windows XP pro x32), died from overheating.
Lucky for me, the hdd is still alive as I have some VERY important files on it (Work related)
The problem is that I cannot retrieve them:
here's exactly what I did:
I inserted my HP's hdd into my Toshiba.

(tried booting from XP but could not start windows since it seems to crash after the loading screen with the XP logo) (Also tried booting in safe mode, but same result)

So, I booted successfully from vista.
when I try to access the "My Documents" folder of the windows XP administrator account from windows vista, it says: Access denied.

I tried also making an administrator account from vista(exact name, case sensitive and same password) hoping to achieve success but no such luck.. I tried various software unlockers but none of them worked

any ideas would be very much appreciated!!

Hello GKahn,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

Have you tried this yet? http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/112795-context-menu-take-ownership.html

Generally the problem is that the permissions are give to a particular ID and the new account has a new ID thus even though the name/password is the same the system still recognizes it as a different account. If that doesn't work, we can delve deeper.

Hope this helps.

Gary

Yeah, I had a similar problem with 2 desktops. The Take Ownership method worked for me.

I think that the above suggestions will work, but in the event that they do not try this.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67567-administrator-account.html?ltr=A

Another possibility if that doesn't do the trick would be to edit permissions via the folder properties.

@garysgold

Thank you! The take ownership method worked like a charm!
I have all the access I needed to recover my old files!

@richc46

I tried the method with the so called "hidden" administrator and still had the same problem
But to be honest, I tried it before posting here, since I was at a dead end I had no other choice than to look around the net and find something/someplace/someone with useful information like this place


Thanks! you guys are awesome! :-)

Your welcome. Glad it worked for you.