how to defeat user password on external drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter michael brooks
  • Start date Start date
M

michael brooks

I have a compaq laptop, running XP home.
My computer stopped booting properly. I get a message giving the options of
booting in safe mode, etc, but none of those options allow me to boot.
I tried putting my drive in a friend's computer (as the main drive), and had
the exact same problem
I also tried connecting the drive to my friend's computer as an external
drive to access the files to save them. We could see the top level
directory, and access some files. But we could not access the files for my
user account, which is password protected. It didn't prompt for a
password--it just said that we did not have permission to view the files.

Help! How can we get around the user password protection for that account to
access the files using it as an external drive? Any other ideas?

thanks!
 
michael brooks said:
I have a compaq laptop, running XP home.
My computer stopped booting properly. I get a message giving the options of
booting in safe mode, etc, but none of those options allow me to boot.
I tried putting my drive in a friend's computer (as the main drive), and had
the exact same problem
I also tried connecting the drive to my friend's computer as an external
drive to access the files to save them. We could see the top level
directory, and access some files. But we could not access the files for my
user account, which is password protected. It didn't prompt for a
password--it just said that we did not have permission to view the files.

Help! How can we get around the user password protection for that account to
access the files using it as an external drive? Any other ideas?

thanks!
Click to expand...

There are several ways to access your files:
- Seize ownership of your folders. Click Start / Help and search
for "ownership" if unsure how to do this.
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD
(http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download)
- Now that you've had a close brush with losing all your files,
consider buying a 2.5" disk in an external USB case for
your weekly backup run. Next time you might not be so lucky.
 
Many thanks,and also to JS--taking ownership worked!

Just curious--what do you think caused the problem? A surface scan didn't
reveal problems.

thanks again
 
I do not know why this happened and I would be extremely
surprised if a surface scan would reveal anything.
 
michael said:
Many thanks,and also to JS--taking ownership worked!

Just curious--what do you think caused the problem? A surface scan didn't
reveal problems.
Click to expand...

It's NOT a problem per se. It's just a feature of XP.
 
Back
Top