Access friends hard disk

My friends computer recently died and i need to access some files on the hard drive.

The problem is that its password protected so i cant get to it in windows, I've tried creating a user acount with his name and password and i've tried using safe mode.

I've got a knoppix 3.8 cd and tried using that and although it can read the files perfectly fine, it can't write to my hard disk or to my external hard disk.

Any ideas about what i can do?

 

If its NTFS (probably) you're in a bit of schtum.

Try making a FAT32 partition on your external drive or a USB key

 

Has your friend used NTFS with it's built in encryption?

If so, the only way to get the files back, is to get his install of windows working again.
The encryption is based off his SAM and even if you reinstall the machine with everything identicle, the SAM is gonna be different and still not allow access to the files.

Try a repair install of windows over the top of his (in his machine).

 

ok, i formated a pen drive to fat32 and still couldn't write to it in knoppix.

I can access the files using knoppix perfectly fine, so im guessing its not NTFS built in encryption.

The original problem was that his motherboard died, rather than just buy a new motherboard he opted to upgrade everything to AM2. His machine wont boot the hard disk, i was guessing this was because his hardware coniguration had changed so much so i'm trying to get his files using my computer.

 

He will need to reinstall windows (you may be able to get in with safe mode but its unlikely.

Have you tried another LiveCD method? And you have mounted the pen drive correctly right?

 

can you take ownership of the hd using permissions?

 

Linux cannot write to NTFS without a 99% chance of corrupting the entire drive. So most NTFS support is read only. Especially on LiveCDs. Try speaking to Glider, he can probably help

 

surely your "friend" would know the password to his own drive....?

 

I think that you should be able to access them from the Administrator account of an XP machine.

 

no matter, i just about managed to boot the hard drive using some old computer parts and get the stuff onto an external drive.

 

This one still confused me.
If you could view the files from another machine, it wasn't encrypted like I had thought.

Where did the password part come in?
If you simply slaved the drive in another XP machine, you should have been able to access his files no problem?

 

no, XP notices the documents folder belongs to another user, since its on the same drive as an XP install an so prevents you from accessing the files. you can access them from any other OS though

 

This is called 'permissions' and as long as the folder isn't encrypted, you can "take permissions" of any drive or folder from WinXP. It is built into WinXP Pro usually, as long as simple file sharing is enabled. These settings are under the security tab in the properties of a drive or folder.

Alternatively, you can add the "security" tab (to any WinXP install), by downloading and running SCESP4I.EXE from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/bussys/winnt/winnt-public/tools/SCM

 

Yeah, was gonna say, you can just take ownership if the drive is slaved in an XP install that you're running as an admin on.