How to view/copy password protected data from another HD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter egrantXP
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egrantXP

OS: Windows XP Professional (SP3)

Problem: The solution to the problem outlined in a post made on Feb. 11,
2009 entitled "Black Screen and Mouse Cursor after Windows XP Splash"
(currently with 6 posts) is quickly looking like it will be a fresh reinstall
of Windows XP Pro. However, before I do this, I want to recover the files
that are available on the HD but are password protected. When I installed XP
I enabled the option to password protect my (or any future users') files.

Description: As outlined in that earlier post, I can hook up my old HD as
the "Master Drive" and the new HD as the "Slave Drive" and boot up Windows. I
can access all files on my new HD (the one with severe booting problems) that
is not password protected, but I cannot access (and thus copy) files that are
password protected - for example: the contents of "My Documents". I did not
see any place to simply provide it with a username and password... is there
even such a thing?

Any help will be greatly appreciated so that I can end this misery.
 
egrantXP said:
OS: Windows XP Professional (SP3)

Problem: The solution to the problem outlined in a post made on Feb. 11,
2009 entitled "Black Screen and Mouse Cursor after Windows XP Splash"
(currently with 6 posts) is quickly looking like it will be a fresh
reinstall
of Windows XP Pro. However, before I do this, I want to recover the files
that are available on the HD but are password protected. When I installed
XP
I enabled the option to password protect my (or any future users') files.

Description: As outlined in that earlier post, I can hook up my old HD as
the "Master Drive" and the new HD as the "Slave Drive" and boot up
Windows. I
can access all files on my new HD (the one with severe booting problems)
that
is not password protected, but I cannot access (and thus copy) files that
are
password protected - for example: the contents of "My Documents". I did
not
see any place to simply provide it with a username and password... is
there
even such a thing?

Any help will be greatly appreciated so that I can end this misery.
Click to expand...

You may simply need to Take Ownership. Google "Take Ownership XP" for many
details.

However, if you *encrypted* the files, that's entirely different. Those
files are only available in unencrypted form after booting to the same
install and the same account, without changing the passwords or altering the
account externally. The only exception to that is if you can import the
account certificates that you weren't forced to export at the time you set
up encryption. If those certificates aren't available and the account has
been altered, the data is gone.

HTH
-pk
 
egrantXP said:
No encryption... only password protect. I will give your suggestion a try.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

If there's no encryption, there shouldn't be any problems after you Take
Ownership.
 
Googled "Take Ownnership" AND "XP" and came up with this Microsoft Support
article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

The reason I could not see any type of "Security" information was because,
under Windows XP Home, I had to log on under the "Administrator" username in
"Safe Mode". This would not have been the case if my old HD also ran Windows
XP Pro.

Thanks again!
 
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