Re: Locked out of my documents - Help please

Yeah wrote:


I was running a Windows XP Pro system with the user account password
protected and my documents private.

The motherboard failed.

The cheapest solution was to buy a new computer which naturally
came with Vista (Home basic).

The drive in the new computer is a WDC Sata drive and so is the drive
from the old computer. I plugged the old drive into the new computer
as a second disk & and can see everything on it. I copied some data
files to the new computer - no problem - then I tried to copy My
Documents. I was denied access. I gained ownership of the My
Documents folder on the old drive and could then see the contents but
I can't gain ownership of the files. Thousands of photos and some Word
& Excel files are there but I can't get at them.

Have I lost everything?

I tried unplugging the HDD from the new computer & plugging in the old
HDD. It gets as far as saying Windows XP & then I get a blue screen,
probably a Sata driver related problem.

Try taking ownership again. I suspect you only took ownership of the parent
folder and didn't check the box so all the child objects (files/folders)
will inherit the parent's (My Documents) permissions.

If that still doesn't work, did you encrypt the files with either XP Pro's
EFS or a third-party encryption program? If yes, did you remember to export
your keys?

If you didn't use encryption but still can't take ownership (and I'm not
sure why this isn't working for you), I'd boot with a Linux live CD like
Knoppix and use it to copy the files over to a different folder. Linux
won't honor Windows' permissions.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

.

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