Accessing "secure" data

[The_Other_One]

I'm not asking for a hacking guide or anything like that... I'm just curious if I take someone's hard drive from a busted laptop, can we pull the old info off and back it up? I don't ever recall ever having a problem doing this, but he seems to think some security measure's in place that'll prevent me from accessing the drive... I don't think he's installed anything additional encryption software or anything.

If I can't just pull it right off, would setting him up an account on another XP machine using his old user name allow us access?

This is what we have to work with There's a problem with the power connector that I might try and fix. But if we can't get that going, he does want some way to get the info off that old drive...

 

[Cromewell]

As long as you access it with an Administrator account I don't see you having any problems. You might not even need that because the my document folders aren't associated with the other XP install.

 

[The_Other_One]

Yeah, I didn't think anything was needed as I've access stuff under Windows and BartPE. Hopefully things will be alright. He'd like to get that drive cleared off, perhaps even get the machine running again.