Tim's Tech Tips

This post was made in response to the following question:

My GF's laptop's power supply died. We couldn't fix that, so we took the HD out and put it into a 2.5" drive enclosure. I need to recover the files in her My Documents folder, but when I plug the drive into a new computer, Windows denies me access. She had two user accounts, both with passwords, on her computer.
Her dead laptop has Win XP installed; the computer I'm trying to rescue from also uses Win XP. I do have a Mac laptop, but I'm sure there would be the same problem.
Any advice on how to recover her files?

I wanted to make this post in addition to my “how to recover your windows password” post, since this is a slightly different but still related topic. The difference is that this person is no longer able to boot from that hard drive, but still wants to recover the files on it.

The solution to this problem is fairly simple.

Step 1: disconnect the hard drive from the laptop. You may have to unscrew a panel to access it, but you should be able to tell where the hard drive is, because it should have an “icon” on the panel that looks like 3 disks stacked on top of eachother. Once the hard drive is removed, provede to step 2.

Step 2: If you’re working with a desktop hard drive you can bypass purchasing a converter cable.
You’ll need to get a converter cable or drive enclosure that allows you to connect your laptop drive to your parallel cable on your desktop. You’ll want to connect it as a SLAVE DRIVE. The slave cable is easy to identify. There should be one cable connecting your motherboard to your desktop’s hard drive, and a second cable coming directly out of the place where it plugs into your hard drive. Essentially, it should be part of the same cable. Plug your hard drive in to the second part of that cable. (You can also purchase a drive-enclosure to connect it through USB rather than parallel but those can be expensive)

Step 3: Boot up your computer. Make sure you’re using an ADMINISTRATOR level account.

Step 4: Navigate, through “My Computer” (or “Computer”, if you’re using Vista) and find the files you’d like to recover. Select those folders, and right-click one of them. Click on “Properties”.

Step 5: Select the “Security” tab, and click on “Advanced”.

Step 6: In the advanced box, select the “Owner” tab, and change the owner to your administrator account.

You’re done! You should now have full access to those files.
I hope this helps!