Aceess to Dead Laptop HD

[Jim T.]

My wife's ten year old Dell laptop has quit. I tried to attach
another monitor, but got nothing, so it's the video card and not
necessarily the screen. AFAIK the keyboard and mouse are OK. I can
access its hard disk on my network, but most of the files I want to
copy are protected - I am "denied access". Is there a way I can get
those from my desktop? I've bought a refurbed Lenovo from IBM, and it
works great except the screen is a little small. BTW, I had
administrator access on the laptop if I was logged on, but I assume
that nobody's logged on!

 

[John McGaw]

My wife's ten year old Dell laptop has quit. I tried to attach
another monitor, but got nothing, so it's the video card and not
necessarily the screen. AFAIK the keyboard and mouse are OK. I can
access its hard disk on my network, but most of the files I want to
copy are protected - I am "denied access". Is there a way I can get
those from my desktop? I've bought a refurbed Lenovo from IBM, and it
works great except the screen is a little small. BTW, I had
administrator access on the laptop if I was logged on, but I assume
that nobody's logged on!

Does a machine this old support remote desktop connection? I suspect not
but if it did the fix should be a simple as logging on remotely as the
administrator and then copying off the needed files to some location on the
network or onto a thumb drive. Probably worth a look as it would be a
simple work-around.