Transfering files from old password protected profile to new compu

[VeritasProloquor]

I recently lost power to an old laptop and could not get it to power on. I
purchased a new laptop that runs Vista. I also purchased a Rocketfish
external hard drive to use in pulling the data from the old laptop and
transfering it to the new one. One of the profiles from the old laptop had a
password protection on it. When I attempt to pull the data off of that User
Profile I am faced with authentication issues. I have the password but no
way to authenticate myself and the profile contained a large amount of
information. Help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

It's not the password that is preventing you from accessing the files, it's
permissions. Right click the folder you are trying to access, choose
properties. On the security tab click advanced. Go to the ownership tab and
change to your current account. Enable the line to propagate to all
subfolders and containers, then click apply/ok and wait while the changes
take place. Close up the security dialogs and you should be able to access
the files.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Adam Albright]

I recently lost power to an old laptop and could not get it to power on. I
purchased a new laptop that runs Vista. I also purchased a Rocketfish
external hard drive to use in pulling the data from the old laptop and
transfering it to the new one. One of the profiles from the old laptop had a
password protection on it. When I attempt to pull the data off of that User
Profile I am faced with authentication issues. I have the password but no
way to authenticate myself and the profile contained a large amount of
information. Help would be greatly appreciated.

If I understand you correctly you can't access files on either the
external drive or the replacement laptop. If the password was of
Windows creation, it actually is doing what it is designed to do,
prevent somebody from accessing your data. The system has no way of
knowing you are you.

I'll assume you tried by disabling UAC and it didn't matter.

I'll further assume you don't have backup... at least not backup minus
the password.

This is similar to encryption. People all the time encrypt files, then
for some reason reinstall the operating system. They think they're
fine because all the encrypted files are on a different partition or
even a different physical driver then to their horror discover Windows
won't let them access the files. The reason is the encryption key is
tied to each instance of the OS. Even repeating the same password
won't help since it gets changed internally when you install Windows
again. Sadly this is what it is designed to do, and with some good
reasons, but it is a hard lesson for many to learn the hard way.

Have you tried to log on as administrator and see if your files are
available that way?