Multibooting from extenal drive after Windows starts

[Guest]

I removed my old hard drive, which has Windows XP home edition, from a
non-working computer, and put it into an external hard drive case. It shows
up fine as a second drive on my laptop, which has Windows XP Professional,
but I cannot access my old files under c:documents and
settings/administrator. I assume this is because it is password protected and
that the only way in in by booting Windows XP (home edition) on the external
drive.

The question is this: Since it isn't possible to boot my system from an
external hard drive directly at startup, can I "multi-boot" - start the
Windows XP home edition on that drive - after I've started the XP
professional on the laptop? Is it as simple as telling the windows boot file
on the external drive to start? If so, what would the name/location of that
file or files be? Or should I create a floppy boot disk first and run off
that?

I realize there are other solutions - put the hard drive on a working
computer and simply move all my documents to a shared directory, or possibly
get multi-boot software, but I really only need to do this once and would
like, if possible, to do it with the external drive.

Suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[thecreator]

Hi JNNY,

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

Try this program. This may work for you.

 

[AZGLI]

Actually, what you should be doing is taking ownership of your files on
the external drive. In XP Pro, open the C drive (or another folder),
pick Tools from the menu bar, and Folder Options from the drop down
menu.
Select the View tab, and scroll all the way to the bottom. Uncheck the
"Use simple file sharing" box and OK out of the dialog box.

Reboot.

Then when you need to access a folder but can't, right click and select
Properties for the folder. Click the Security tab and then the Advanced
tab. Click on the Owner tab, and Check the "Replace Owner" checkbox.
Click on your username and click OK. This will replace the existing
owner with your user as the owner and will give you access to all the
files.

HTH.

 

[Guest]

That was exactly it, and you have a gift for clarity, too. Thank you, thank
you, thank you.

 

[Guest]

The other solution worked, so I didn't try this, but thank you for responding.