Xp Home Permissions Nightmare!

Hi all, I recently helped a friend of mine with his Dell. He (for reasons unbeknownst to me) disabled both displays, so he was in Windows but could not see anything (strangely this was also the case in safe mode). He has nearly 3 years of work in his Documents and Settings folder which he needed access to. Dell was going to have him install Windows over the existing installation, which I believe erases everything in the DAS folder.

So we put in a small hard drive as primary, installed his OEM XP Home on there and installed his old, larger drive as the secondary. I think all his files are still intact, but when we try to open, move, copy, etc. the folders we get access denied. I know Home isn't as permissions-friendly as Pro or 2000, but we really need to get to those files. The new Windows install has a different machine name and username also. What's the easiest way to get access to these files? Copy them to a FAT partition? Remote desktop login as the old username?

Thanks for your help. Peace and chicken grease.

Things to try.

-Boot system with DOS boot disk.
-Navigate to files that you are trying to recover.
-Use attrib command to remove attributes that are preventing the copying of files.
If the drive is formatted in ntfs, DOS will not be able to see the drive.

Attribute Syntax

ATTRIB [+R | -R] [+A | -A] [+S | -S] [+H | -H] [[drive:][path]filename] [/S]

+ Sets an attribute. - Clears an attribute. R Read-only file attribute. A Archive file attribute. S System file attribute. H Hidden file attribute. /S Processes files in all directories in the specified path.

If the drive is formatted in ntfs, here are a couple ideas.
-Download and use the free NTFSDOS found here. LINK
-My last suggestion is to boot into linux using Knoppix or other live linux distribution. Copy files as needed.

As long as they only performed a "Repair" install his D&S should be saved. Another option like you chose is a parallel install of the OS. Try efc's suggestions from above and let us know.

[afterthought]

You might also try following this artcle from Microsoft "Access is Denied" Error Message When You Try to Open a Folder

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=810881

Are you logged on as admin when you do this?

Rather than using MS-DOS and some 3rd party ntfs reader utility you could try booting from a live Linux distro like Knoppix for example, it has the advantage of being able to burn CDs and store your files on a usb stick.