Locked out of My Documents

I was running Windows XP Pro until recently when the motherboard failed.
The cheapest solution was to buy a new computer which naturally came with Vista (Home Basic).
The new computer has a WDC Sata HDD and so had the old one. I plugged the old HDD into the new computer as a second drive and was able to copy some data files to the new computer, the problem is with everything in My Documents on the old drive. I've gained ownership of the My Docs folder but can't get ownership of the files in it. I had a password protected user account in XP with My Documents private. Is there any hope of getting at my files?
Any help would be much appreciated.

Ed

 

Yes. There are several methods, the easiest of which would be to create a 'live CD" of some type. A live CD is basically a full operating system that runs entirely from the CD, thereby allowing you to circumnavigate passwords because you aren't using the hard drives and any profiles or security set up on those drives is inactive (most of the time). I have successfully copied password protected files using the UBCD4Win (Ultimate Boot CD for Windows), however the newer versions tend to adhere to protection with passworded files, preventing copying them from one drive to another (this has happened to me with v3.2), so you may have to use an older version (v3.12 or older) if you can find one for download. I did a quick search and couldn't find any previous releases for download anywhere except on torrent sites. But I did a quick search, so if you're determined, you should be able to find an older one if the new release doesn't work. You can also use Knoppix (a Linux OS that runs from the CD); it's free and can be downloaded here. You can also try using the Active@BootDisk which has a free demo version with most of the features active. It should allow you to explore the D: drive (or whatever the old XP drive letter is) and copy the needed files to a folder on C:. You can download the free demo ISO image from this link.
Good luck! I hope this helps, and welcome to Major Geeks! :wave

[dlb]
:major

(you'll need an XP disc to build the UBCD4Win, and you'll need to read the how-to-build-the-CD guide)