Can't retrieve docs from laptop hard drive

[femsh]

My laptop (running xp home) recently died, but the hard drive is fine. I just built a desktop running XP pro, and I'm trying to get my old documents, etc. from the hard drive. I bought a 2.5" hd USB enclosure, and XP recognizes the HD just fine. I can explore and access most of the files from there, including stuff from the desktop and 'my documents' from other profiles, but when I try to access my profile folders, xp tells me 'access denied'. I tried dragging my profile to the 'shared documents' folder like xp says and changing the folder properties, but it's still not working. The properties for my profile indicates 0 files and 0 bytes, but I don't think this is the case. I've tried searching the HD for files I know exist on my profile (including the 'hidden files' option'), but nothing's showing up. I even tried booting up the new computer using the old HD, but it wouldn't complete startup. It looks like just about everything except my profile are accessible. Help! Thanks.