Retrieving Data From Old Drive

[Capt Proton]

I had a hard drive start to go bad. I installed a new hard drive and did a fresh install of XP Home on it. I then hooked up the old hard drive to try to get some data off it. I can see everything all right, but, when I try to open or copy the Owner Documents And Settings folder so I can get to the old My Documents, I get the message that I don't have sufficient rights to access the folder. I tried changing it from Read Only, but that doesn't stick, and was no help. I thought if I went in Safe Mode as the administrator, I would be able to access it, but, I could not. Another interesting aspect is that the drive is almost full, only 944 MBs free on a 40 Gig drive. I know most of that is in the My Documents folder, pictures and music files, but, when I look at properties for the Documents and Settings Folder, or hover the cursor over it, it tells me the folder is empty.
Any suggestions as to how to get to my data?

[ex2cib]

did you make your files private on your old computer? im guessing this is XP.

try havnig the exact same username as the old computer and the exact same password. that might work.

[nn_step]

start up windows in the manner in which you see the files that you want.
Create a folder on your C drive named new. Then go to the folder in which your most important files are and right click, then click Open command window here. Then type move *.* C:\new
and everything in that folder will be moved and saved at your C: drive in a folder named new