Trouble accessing folders on secondary drive..

"Access denied"!

Having bought a new laptop, I took the HD from the old one and placed it in an external HD enclosure and plugged it in to the new laptop through the provided USB cable. I can access the HD, but the "Owner" folder under "Documents and Settings" is protected and it won't let me access it.

I tried the following:
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To take ownership of the folders, locate the ones you want and right click them and select Properties. Here you will see a Security tab. Click this tab and if a security message appears just click OK. Click on Advanced and then go to the Owner tab. Locate your user name in the Name list or select the account you are logged in with and check the box that says "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects."

Click OK. If you get a box popping up that says "You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? " Click Yes.
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Everthing is fine until I hit on OK (at the start of 2nd paragraph above). An hourglass comes on for a few seconds and a message stating Security Error and Access Denied pops up, and things go back to the Properties box.

How do you get around this? I need to access the Owner folder on the HD.

Thank you.

 

"Unlocker helps delete locked files with error messages like..."

I actually want to access and use the files, not delete them!



Other ideas?

 

Yes, in the Security Tab (in Properties). There are currently currently two users showing: one is a long string of numbers with dashes in it, the other is System....

 

Tim..what's next?

 

The original directions are now working..

Thanks for your help.