My girlfriend's pc had a problem which meant she couldn't boot windows (xp pro sp2).
Her uni work is on the hard drive of that pc (sata), so i put the drive into my pc using the spare sata port.
I just want to retreive all her files and photo's etc, then I will reinstall window's on the hard drive on her own machine.

My machine can see her drive and I can see the folders within "documents and settings", however........

although I can see the contents of my loggin (john) her loggin doesnt appear to be there at all. There were 2 loggin's on her installation of windows:

JOHN (which can be veiwed, and was *genereal user* and had no password)

and

LAYLA (which I cant see, and was *ADMIN* and had a password)

The folders I can see on the drive (in doc's and setting's) are

Admin
All users
Default user
User
John

The folder - "User", displays "access is denied" message when clicked.

We would both be real grateful for any help if you can give it as there are some important files at steak! she did have them backed up but her flash storage drive has packed in as well. how unlucky!

Cheers guy's.

Hi John, welcome to PCHF.

The Access Denied message will appear if the "Make Private" was checked when creating the account. The only other way you can access these files is by logging on as Administrator in Safe Mode.

- Reboot the PC.
- Press [F8] as the PC is starting up, and you will come to a startup menu.
- At the startuo menu, select Safe Mode.
- At the logon screen, use the username Administrator (The password will be the password you used during the first setup. If no password was used, then leave the password blank).
- Go to the folder your having problems with, right click on it and go to Properties.
- Under the Security tab, click Advanced followed by the Owner tab.
- In the Name list, click Administrator or click the Administrators group.
- Select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.

The folder is on a secondary hard drive from my gf's pc. I am looking at this drive using window's on MY pc. I can't boot from her drive. Is that what you where suggesting?

Whichever PC the secondary HDD is installed on, should be the one you will need to startup in Safe Mode with. Failing that, the HDD will need to be installed on a PC that can startup in safe mode.

EDIT: Marked as Answered.