I’ve taken the hard drive out of my laptop which has died, and hooked it up to my desktop computer in order to retrieve a file I need. However, when I open it, and go into C:/Documents and Settings/ there are the usual folders “Administrator” “All Users” and “CynicalGabe”. When I try to open “CynicalGabe” (my file lies within), it says I do not have permission, but the others I can open fine.
How can I get my file and how to I change these permissions?
Did you connect the laptop drive as a second drive? It shouldn’t be mapping as C:
Well, it could, if you had some non-standard install on another drive letter (made that mistake before). But yes, it shouldn’t be C:.
You might try logging on as Administrator. If you’re using XP Home, use either safe mode or hit ctrl-alt-del twice at the logon screen.
If that doesn’t workt, I recomment using a live Linux distro, which will ignore the ACL entries forbidding you access. Here’s a post of mine a while ago with a bit more detail.
I imagine that the permissions on the laptop folder only allow some user(s) defined on the laptop to access it. Since you are logging on to the desktop with an account defined on a different PC (unless you are using Windows domain accounts, but I’m guessing not), you have no permissions.
However, if you log on to a Windows PC as administrator, you can always take ownership (right click - Properties - Security - Advanced - Owner, in Windows XP) of a file or directory on a local disk, and then change the permissions to your heart’s content (right click etc., similar to before). E.g. add your user name and give it Full Control permissions.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to type “C”. It was actually D. I did get it fixed, but I had to change ownership on each subfolder. For some reason it wouldnt apply the setting to all ‘children’ and subobjects. even when I instructed it to do so. Thanks for the help guys.