How do I access files on my laptops corrupt hard drive?

[alexjholland]

Hello.

I have an Evesham Desktop, and an Evesham laptop.

I use the desktop for entertainment, and the laptop for music production.

I have had a few issues that I believe are related to having more than one soundcard installed that result in the occassional blue screen at startup, but a restart means it works fine afterwards.

I was getting on the train a few weeks ago when I noticed the plastic screen casing has cracked and was flexing lots, so I sent it away to be fixed, relatively content that nothing related to my system would be affected at all.

I was wrong. I have now got it back and I get a blue screen EVERY time I boot up, all I need to do is get on ONCE so I can get very important music off and then destructive reformat.

- I purchased a hard drive caddy that lets me access my laptop HD as a portable hard drive, I can see the contents of the my laptops "desktop", when I plug it into my desktop pc, but as soon as I try to access anything in my private folders, which are restricted to my personal windows logon, such as "my documents", it says they are 0kB and won't let me access them.

- Either

A) Can someone think of a way to access these files on my desktop computer, and work out why it won't let me view them, or

B) Can someone think of something I can do to make the hard drive work in my computer, I have tried safe mode and that didn't seem to work..

I am relatively computer literate, but am prone to silly mistakes and overlooking obvious things, so any help would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks guys,

Alex

 

[Uhtred]

a - easy, but are you using xp pro or xp home on your desktop?
if xp pro you need to take ownership of the files, right click, props, security and advanced i think. Got to pop out, will post back with more detail if needed.

if xp home i htink you need to do it in safe mode

 

[teaboy5]

if you need to take ownership


Go into tools folder options and untick use simple file sharing, doing this will open up the security tab within properties.


Go into security and select advanced i think and then the owner tab, and set it to change all files and folders to your laptop account

 

[alexjholland]

Ah excellent, thanks for some solid ideas guys.

I'm running XP Home, are these ideas both things that will work bearing in mind that there is no way I can boot up my laptop? I can only do things that work with the laptop Hard Drive plugged into a USB caddy, into my Desktop computer.

Girlfriend over soon, I'll work through both those plans later tonight though..

Thanks again! Alex

 

[alexjholland]

Sorry, I changed, I do NOT use XP Home, I use XP Media Centre Edition!!

 

[alexjholland]

AHhhhh.. Sweet! I can see all my files now!

Thanks so much guys, so I happy I found this forum, I have NO idea what I would have done, probably paid someone £50 and watched them for 2 minutes before realising they had no more idea than i did..

Alex