Laptop Drive Recovery Problems XP

[Guest]

My Vaio laptop is fried. I now have a Dell Inspiron. I recently purchase a
laptop hard drive enclosure to recovery the files from the old drive. I was
unable to boot from the old drive when I installed into the Dell! At this
point, I cannot access my data files since my vaio administrator (the only
user) is password protected. How may I work around this to recover my data
files? I have XP with only one log in on the Vaio drive. An error message
appears with no place to login. Please help!

 

[RA]

My Vaio laptop is fried. I now have a Dell Inspiron. I recently
purchase a laptop hard drive enclosure to recovery the files from the
old drive. I was unable to boot from the old drive when I installed
into the Dell! At this point, I cannot access my data files since my
vaio administrator (the only user) is password protected. How may I
work around this to recover my data files? I have XP with only one
log in on the Vaio drive. An error message appears with no place to
login. Please help

Don't try to boot with the Sony drive. If you install the drive as a second
drive, you should be able to see the data after booting from the Dell. I
used a usb enclosure for my drive and was able to copy everythiing off.
My Sony laptop had the dreaded dimm slot overheating problem, which made me
believe the whole
thing was toast because it would not boot. Sony is no help and if you have
them do the repair, it will cost a small fortune. If you are having the same
no boot problem, it is possible to get it fixed at a very reasonable price
at a company in NY. This webpage describes the issue.
http://www.aqstech.com/vaio.html
I have no connection with this company aside from being a very satisfied
customer. I shipped the laptop to them, minus the battery, harddrive and ac
power and I got it back, good as new, in a week. The price was $150 plus
shipping, and it was worth every penny to have my laptop in working
condition again.

 

[Guest]

I have a usb enclosure. Since the documents and settings of the user are
password protected, none of the files may be accessed. Those are the only
useful files on the drive. Btw, I am not interested in repairing the Vaio.
I have already replaced it with the Dell.

If anyone knows how to access these files, please advise. Thanks!

 

[R. McCarty]

If I follow your description correctly, you just need to take ownership
of the files. When you say password protected, I'm assuming you are
talking about a account with a password and not some type of data
encryption (EFS) on the files.
Here is the MS KB article for taking ownership:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421

 

[Asher_N]

If you can see the old Vaio drive,
right click on 'document and settings',
select 'Sharing and Security'.
Select the 'Security' tab.
Click the 'Advanced' button
Select the 'owner' tab
select a valid user ID from the list.
Make suer you put a check mark in the 'Replace owner on subcontainers and
object'
Click the 'Apply' button