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.