Access problem with old hard drive

[caseyd]

My motherboard just recently kicked the bucket and I had to switch my drives to another computer. I wasn't able to just hook up the hard drive I was using to boot xp off of into the other computer, so I had to resort to using a third hard drive, installing xp on that to access my original boot drive. Whenever I try to access the Documents and Settings folder for my user account, 'Owner', on my original drive, I get an 'access denied' message. There's no real data that is absolutely vital to get out of that folder since I make regular backups, but is there a way I can get access to it? BTW, the drive was being used as a boot drive for Windows XP with all current upgrades.

Thanks.

[thefultonhow]

You need to take ownership of the folder. To do so in XP Pro, in the Explorer window, go to Tools > Folder Options, View, and scroll down to the bottom and uncheck "Use simple file sharing."

In XP Home, reboot in safe mode.

Then, in either, right-click on the folder, go to the Security tab, click Advanced, then Owner, then change the owner to your account, check "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," and click OK, then OK again.

[caseyd]

I followed your advice and it worked for me partly. I am still having trouble accessing subfolders and the specific files within those folders. I tried fiddling with everything I could possibly think of in the advanced security settings windows and I must be doing some wrong. I just want to be able to grant user 'casey' full access to everything in the folder, other folders, and files included.
I've looked at a few knowledge articles on msdn, but they are all pretty similar to what I've already been doing. I am using XP Home, so a few of the suggestions I've got from there don't apply. This is really starting to frustrate me..

lol
Thanks

[Ob1]

go take ownership of all the files again just like thefultonhow stated in his post. next go back to the security tab on the root of that drive, and make sure administrators is showing in the group or user names: and also add casey in there or add casey to the administrators group and add the everyone group and give those groups full rights, now click the advanced tab again group and check "replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects which will push these permissions down through all subfolders and files. and see if that fixes your access denied issue.

[caseyd]

Okay, that was one of the most unintuitive things I've ever used, but I finally after a few hours of messing around got all the data I needed off of the old drive. The problem was that I couldn't get the privileges to cascade all the way down through the subfolders. Doing what you all said, I would select a folder, change the privileges and click the box to apply to all children objects, and the drop down box to read "This folder, subfolders, and files". It would only go about two folders deep. I ended up just going through every folder I wanted and it's sub folders and changing the privileges that way. This is even after I changed all the privileges for the root folder.

Thanks for all your help.
Casey

[glc]

I had to do that a couple weeks ago myself - yes, it's time consuming.