“Permission denied” - Data recovery in Windows XP

Due to some reason my Windows OS is not working now. So right now my harddisk is a device with data but no working operating system. I plugged in the drive at the friend’s machine. I am able to access all data (picture, text data, etc) in D, E, .. drives, all data in C drive can be accessed except in folder “C:\Documents and Settings\anant” which is the administrator profile (Username). The Error message I get is “Access is denied”.

I am accessing the data in my harddisk by connecting to my friend’s PC and making my harddisk as slave so that my drives are viewed in his My Computer. My PC also had 2 other profiles ( non-administrator profiles) which can accessed.

Please give me input on how I can access my administrator profile.
- Anant

This has occured because that folder was created on an NTFS file system volume by using a some other installation of Windows XP, and then accessing from another Windows XP and the security ID doesn’t match the security ID of the owner of the folder and so you cannot open.

To resolve this issue, you must turn off Simple File Sharing, and then take ownership of the folder. The steps are as follows:-

1. Turn off Simple File Sharing:
1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab.
3. Under Advanced Settings, click to clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) check box, and then click OK.
2. Taking Ownership:
1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message, if one appears.
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group.
5. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, click to select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
6. Click OK.
7. You may receive the following error message, where Folder is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of:

You do not have permission to read the contents of directory Folder. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.

8. Click Yes.
9. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and the folder contents.

Disclaimer: I do not guarantee that this will save your files. All I can say is that I’ve done it successfully on dozens of machines.

Source: http://www.jkg.in/37-permission-denied-data-recovery-in-windows-xp/