Problem with Private Folder/need to recover data

[Justin]

My old computer recently failed on me(motherboard fried in
recent outages), and I'm left with my painfully un-backed-
up hard drive. I purchased a new system, installed my old
hard drive with Windows Xp Home Edition on it, only to
find when I booted up I recieved the blue screen of death.
I got the "Windows has halted operation to prevent damage
to your computer etc etc etc" message. I tried everything
I could think of and more to get it working again with my
new motherboard/processor, but it doesn't seem to be
working. I then booted off the original Windows Xp disc,
and it proceeded to install a new copy of Xp on my same
hard drive that worked just fine. So I now have the option
of choosing between the two copies of XP at boot-up, only
one of which works. All my files are intact on the hard
drive, but I can't access any of the files in My Documents
or any of it's subfolders due to the fact that they were
marked "Private". Unfortunately for me, that is where
everything I need is kept. I now get the Access Denied
message at any attempt to copy, access, view, explore,
move, cut, copy, delete, etc etc. Since I can't log into
my old XP as my Admin account, is there anything I can do?
If you've read this far, thank you, and thank you if you
can offer any help. PLEASE HELP!

-Justin

 

[Taurarian]

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q308421&
HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP

NOTE: You must be logged on to the computer using an account that has
administrative privileges. If you are running Windows XP Home Edition, in
order to have access to the Security tab, you must first start in Safe Mode
and log on with an account that has Administrative rights.



The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

Microsoft Windows XP Professional

This article was previously published under Q308421


Hope this assists you.