Access "My Documents" folder from Administrator account

Factual Questions
1

I have a friends computer that has been taken over by a bunch of viruses and Trojans. I can not log into her user account anymore. I am trying to back up what she wants to keep before I wipe the hard drive and reload. I was able to log into the hidden Administrator account, and have backed up everything except her “My Documents” folder.

The problem is: When I try to access the “My Documents” folder I keep getting the error “Access Denied”. Her account has a password (which I know), so I’m sure Windows set something up in the permissions. I just don’t know how to change them so I can get in.

She’s running Windows XP Media Center Edition

Any help would be appreciated.

2

Take ownership of the folder first.

3

yoyodyne very helpful link, however, there is one problem. According to the link, you have to boot into safe mode to be able to change the permissions, however her computer is so screwed up that it won’t boot into safe mode. When I try I get a BSOD.

I’ve tried safe mode, where it won’t boot, and her account has a million popups that I can’t get passed (I tried, and it has disabled the ability to Ctl-Alt-Del). Is there any way that I can get into the My Documents folder? Maybe a command line command?

4

Have you tried it without Safe Mode?

5

Reply, yes, with a regular boot up, the security tab is not there.

6

After some Googling, there’s supposed to be a command-line version called “takeown” that ought to work for XP. It used to be included in the Windows 2000 Resource Kit, but not anymore for some reason.

I found it on a third-party site, but DOWNLOAD/USE AT YOUR OWN RISK…

http://www.dynawell.com/download/reskit/microsoft/win2000/takeown.zip

7

Best way to get into a system like this is with a PE disk like bart PE, Active@boot, or the like.

This way you can read the file system and copy to an external drive or another partition. It pretty much ignores XP password security.

8

I think this will work:

Navigate to c:\program files\internet explorer
Right click in iexplore.exe and select run as
Enter her account’s credentials, user name and password
In the address bar for the resulting IE window, go to c:\documents and settings. Windows will switch IE to a regular explorer window, except it has her credentials loaded instead of yours.
Navigate to her My Docs and see if you can access it now.

9

If the above options don’t work, try creating a new user account with the same password as her old user account.

10

Thanks for all the help guys! I got in touch with my brother who knows more then I do with OS’s, he got me to the files by booting into Linux. I got the files I needed.

Thank you all for your help.

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