Dead computer, locked hard drive?

July 13, 2005 8:58 PM

My wife's computer died (autopsy pending). I took her hard drive out, put it in an Adaptec external enclosure, and hooked it to my machine via USB. It runs fine and I can see the directory tree, but it won't let me access the important stuff under her profile in Documents and Settings -- just says "Access Denied." Is there any way around this?

Her machine is a Dell 2400 running XP Pro, mine Dell 4300 with XP Home. I figure I can't access the files since I'm not logged on as her, but there's no way I can be under the circumstances. Her documents and email files are in there and she's got deadlines at her newspaper. There are no backups.

posted by words1 to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Best answer: Right click the disk in My Computer, and go to properties.

Click the Security tab, then the "Advanced" button.

Then, click the "Owner" tab. In the "Change owner to:" box, click your login name, then check the box "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects" and click OK. It may ask whether you're sure. You are, so click Yes.

Now wait.

And wait.

And, depending on how much stuff you have on the drive, wait some more. It's going through and touching every single file on the drive, so it'll take a while.

This will bring you back to the main "Local Disk Properties" page. Click the "Advanced" button again.

Remove all of the "Permission Entries" (click an entry, then "Remove").

After they're all removed, click "Add" and type "Everyone" then click OK. This will bring up a dialog asking exactly what permissions you want to give. Click the "Full Control" entry under "Allow" (which should auto-fill the rest of the entries), and make sure "Apply onto:" says "This folder, subfolders and files" then click OK.

This will bring you back to the "Permission Entries" box. Check the box that says "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects."

You might be presented with a dialog box, confirming the permissions change. Just click Yes.

Now wait.

And wait.

And, depending on how much stuff you have on the drive, wait some more. It's going through and touching every single file on the drive, so it'll take a while.

Finally, when you get back out to local disk properties window, click OK, and you should be good to go.
posted by chota at 9:19 PM on July 13, 2005

what chota said, previous question here, worked like a charm. Make sure simple file sharing is turned off.
posted by Grod at 9:31 PM on July 13, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks for typing that all out, chota. If/when the drive goes back into its native machine, should I reverse all that first?

In that other thread there was a mention of booting from a Knoppix disk. I have an Ubuntu disk -- would booting with that sidestep the file permission issue?
posted by words1 at 9:50 PM on July 13, 2005

Had a problem like that on an XP drive. I had to put the thing into a windows2000 machine without dumbed-down security settings in order to get the files back.
posted by delmoi at 9:52 PM on July 13, 2005

words1, when I did the same thing, yeah, you have to reassign ownership and permissions when you put the drive back.
posted by Grod at 10:36 PM on July 13, 2005

I'd try to boot into it using Knoppix.
posted by k8t at 5:43 AM on July 14, 2005

words1 writes "If/when the drive goes back into its native machine, should I reverse all that first?"


Best practice would be to but as long as you give "Everyone" "Full" permission it'll work ok.
posted by Mitheral at 7:42 AM on July 14, 2005

Response by poster: problem: I'm using xp home, not pro. None of those options seem to exist.

When I boot with Ubuntu, I can see the contents of the drive, but I can't figure out how to find my own C: drive, where I'd put the things I copy.
posted by words1 at 10:04 AM on July 14, 2005

This article from Microsoft says that in order to get the Security tab in XP Home, you have to boot in safe mode. Supposedly there is a utility that will allow you to set the file permissions as well.
posted by curse at 10:24 AM on July 14, 2005

Response by poster: Just for posterity, chota's procedure worked perfectly once I restarted in safe mode. Thanks again.
posted by words1 at 11:05 AM on July 15, 2005

Response by poster: I meant thanks to all. You folks saved my sanity.
posted by words1 at 11:10 AM on July 15, 2005