Getting into a user's documents-- but they're mine!

OK, I wanted to really clean up this great old 3-year-old Dell PC with its collective peculiarities. So I bought a new hard drive and put it in the primary position and moved the old HD to an alternate position. I reloaded Windows XP Pro from Cd, onto the new HD, and made user profiles etc. I reintalled all the programs from scratch. So far it runs nice and smooth.

The machine saw the two partitions on the old drive and renamed them, D: and E: I think. So I can access that old drive until I am ready to pull it out. I copied large directories of photos, music, etc. to the new drive just fine.

Problem is, I was hoping to copy all my documents from the "MY DOCUMENTS" folder under my old profile on that old hard drive. But the folder now appears to be locked as though I am a different user. (Actually my username is the same on the new OS, as it was under the old OS.) It won't let me activate "Sharing" on that directory either.
Any way to get back into my stuff? TIA-- Greg.

 

1. Right click that My Documents folder and select Properties. If there is a Security tab, select it, then skip down to #3. Otherwise go to #2

2. Exit the Properties dialog and click Tools on the menu, then Folder Options. Scroll down and uncheck 'Use simple file sharing'. Click Apply and OK out. Open the My Documents Properties dialog again.

3. On the Security tab, click Advanced, then Owner tab. Select your username in the list, check the box to 'Replace owner on subcontainers and objects', then click Apply. OK your way out and see if you can access/copy the files. If not, post back and we'll go through settings permissions for your new username.

 

Dave, you got it right! Thanks! Greg.

 

Happy to help