Permission Problem trying to recover HDD

R

rickwash

New Member
Setup: My old XP machine crashed and burned (possible lightning strike). However, the Hard Drive survived. I used my IDE to USB 2.0 adapter and hooked up the HDD to my new Vista machine.
Problem: While I can access, view, and copy all other files, I cannot access the My Documents folder because I don't have permissions. Well, let me clarify that - I can see the files, but I get the permissions error when I attempt to open or copy the files, individually, in groups, or by parent folder. Duh.
Is there anyway I can access the Owner files (My Documents and all sub-folders) from my Vista machine?
Thanks in advance!
 

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I've never had problems doing that. But, why not try booting using the XP HDD as the boot disk? I'm guessing that your Owner account was password protected. When you boot as the XP computer, you can manipulate the snot out of those things and move them into non-protected folders (or even burn them to a DVD or something to back up).
 

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Thanks - Definitely worth a shot. Hopefully I can figure out how to do it... Funny thing is that I know the password, but I'm never prompted to enter it.
 

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Well, if you have to force your way to getting it to boot that way, you may have to swap out hard disks inside your computer. The advantage there is that you could actually just slave the drive internally and not have to go through a USB slot. Could be a pain to do, but it might end up being the best way.
 

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Groan...looks like my new machine isn't using IDE, so I'll have to add a cable and unhook the one in there...this might be interesting!
 

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System One

rickwash said:
Setup: My old XP machine crashed and burned (possible lightning strike). However, the Hard Drive survived. I used my IDE to USB 2.0 adapter and hooked up the HDD to my new Vista machine.
Problem: While I can access, view, and copy all other files, I cannot access the My Documents folder because I don't have permissions. Well, let me clarify that - I can see the files, but I get the permissions error when I attempt to open or copy the files, individually, in groups, or by parent folder. Duh.
Is there anyway I can access the Owner files (My Documents and all sub-folders) from my Vista machine?
Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Hi Rickwash,

Welcome to Vista Forums. :party:

You might try to take ownership of those files on the XP drive to get access to them. It should allow you to do what you want with them afterwards. This will show you how. Method Two might be best for just a few files.

How to Take Ownership of a Item in Vista

Shawn
 

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    Hard Drives
    512 GB M.2 SSD
Hello all! The first attempt - physically installing the HDD into the Vista machine (and disconnecting the Vista drive) did in fact work as far as being able to boot into XP, but I still did not have access into the Owner directory. So, I put the HDD back as a slave with the USB converter and followed the instructions as provided - SUCCESS!!!

Thanks so much! Now to post my video driver woes in another thread... :-)
 

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