Restricted Files on Windows

June 18, 2006 7:10 AM

How can I access restricted files on a Windows partition?

I recently set up a friend's computer. I took the hard drive from his old Windows XP machine and put it in his new machine, and set it up as a secondary drive, so he could access all of his files.

But... the files in his home directory, Windows tells me access is restricted to those, because he isn't the user that is assigned to that home directory, because he is on a different machine.

Is there any way to access those files from the machine that the hard drive is currently in?

posted by benjh to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Take Ownership
posted by majick at 7:41 AM on June 18, 2006

As long as he didn't encrypt them.... with an administrative account, navigate to the containing folder, right click it, and choose Properties.

Go to the Security Tab and click the Advanced button. Click on the Owner tab. If his new account is listed in the window, click it.

If it isn't, click the Other Users and Groups button, type his username, and click Find Names. It will come back with COMPUTERNAME\account in the little window. Click OK. NOW click the name.

Finally, click the checkbox 'Replace owner on subcontainers and objects', and click OK. It may ask you if you really want to do this... say yes.

It should then zoom through and change the owner of all the files, and he should now be able to access them.
posted by Malor at 7:45 AM on June 18, 2006

(See also: Take Ownership, Take Ownership, Take Ownership, Take Ownership, etc.)
posted by majick at 11:29 AM on June 18, 2006