Here's the situation: some kind of irreparable screw-up on a family member's machine, can't log into Windows, can't restore, can't reinstall without risking losing the data on the hard-drive.

So I unplug the drive, stuck it into my machine as a secondary IDE slave: now I'm trying to access the 'My Documents' folder. Problem is there's an access violation, and I can't get at the data I want to recover. Now I gather the way around this involves me (as administrator of the PC) 'taking ownership' of the drive, thus giving me full access and enabling me to copy and paste the data onto my hard-disk. Can anyone tell me how to do this?

I didn't have time to post a system diag, sorry.

I'd be really grateful for any advice you could give me. Thanks very much in advance.

Hi Elmerdinkley,

Welcome to the PCHF, the page here should set you straight on how to take ownership of the folders so you can acess the data.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421
Let us know how it goes

Hi there and welcome to PCHf

We have covered this topic quite a few times. Have a look at this thread first: http://www.pchelpforum.com/windows-x...ight=Ownership and then search for "ownership"

Hi guys,
Thanks for the welcome and the advice. I'm making progress. The only problem I now have is that I seem to need to take ownership of every file/folder individually, which is going to prove very time consuming indeed. Is there some way of taking ownership of a folder including all sub-folders?

Thanks again.

Sure, just check the box to replace all "Child" object permissions - that will propogate throughout the sub folders/files then.

Really appreciate all this help you're giving me, sorry if I'm dragging this out: I've tried ticking the box you mentioned then attempting to open a subfolder again, but I still get an 'Access is denied' message.

Here's where I am: http://putfile.com/pic.php?pic=4/10016083961.jpg&s=x11

Almost there. Thanks again.

Did you click on "apply" straight after you ticked the box as mentioned above?