Upgrading hard drives - folder access

[bds218]

I've had a hard drive problem in my HP laptop and I'm replacing it with
a new drive. I have an upgrade kit that includes an adapter which
basically turns the hard drive into an external drive to enable
cloning. I want to use the adapter to pull the files off that old
drive that remain uncorrupted. To access the files I had on my
desktop, I'm navigating to "Documents and Settings", but when I try to
open the folder that is named [my profile name], I get a message about
access denied. I had a password on bootup when this old hard drive was
in the laptop. Does anyone know how to get around this, or where I can
enter the password to access these files? Note that there are enough
corrupted files on the old drive that Windows isn't able to boot from
it.

Thanks

 

[Rock]

I've had a hard drive problem in my HP laptop and I'm replacing it with
a new drive. I have an upgrade kit that includes an adapter which
basically turns the hard drive into an external drive to enable
cloning. I want to use the adapter to pull the files off that old
drive that remain uncorrupted. To access the files I had on my
desktop, I'm navigating to "Documents and Settings", but when I try to
open the folder that is named [my profile name], I get a message about
access denied. I had a password on bootup when this old hard drive was
in the laptop. Does anyone know how to get around this, or where I can
enter the password to access these files? Note that there are enough
corrupted files on the old drive that Windows isn't able to boot from
it.

Thanks

You need to take ownership of the files and folders. See this article
for how to do this or from Start click on Help and Support, type
Ownership in the search box and click ok. Click on the entry "Take
Ownership of a file or folder".

HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308421