How can I get access to user folder from another computer?

Question

My wife's laptop died. It was running Windows 10. I'm working on replacing it with the same model of laptop so I can try just installing her hard drive in it.

In the meantime, my son needs access to files he created under her account. He created them under her \Users\(username)\Documents folder.

I put her hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure, and attached it to my laptop via USB. I can see the files on her hard drive fine. But when I double-click on her \Users\(username) folder, I get the message:

"You don't currently have permission to access this folder. Click Continue to permanently get access to this folder."

I clicked Continue, and it churned for a while, but still refused access.

I have an account on my laptop for my wife. It has exactly the same username and password. I tried logging into that account, but still got the same error trying to access that folder.

I went into my laptop's BIOS and configured it to boot to my wife's hard drive on USB. It tried, but went into sad face blue screen and restarted. It attempted a repair but still went into sad face blue screen and rebooted, repeatedly.

Since I know the username and password of the account with rights to that folder, it seems to me there should be some way I can get access. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Do not attempt to boot into the OS installed in the laptop's HDD on a different computer, that's plainly silly, because different computers have different hardwares, and different hardwares need different drivers, hardwares need drivers specifically designed for them in order to work, Windows doesn't come with preinstalled drivers and installs them during initialization(Preparing Devices, Getting Devices Ready), once initialization is complete Windows will have drivers that are only compatible to the particular hardware of the computer it is installed on, and incompatible to any other hardware, so you can't boot the installation on any other computer unless the other computer has exactly the same hardware as the computer on which the OS was installed.

And the account and password are completely irrelevant and useless here, since it's impossible to boot into the HDD, the account and password are only required when log in to the OS on the HDD and using the OS on the HDD , but since you have a working computer and have already put the HDD inside an external enclosure they are useless here, you don't need the account and password.

Instead you need to use these:

Open elevated cmd:

Win+R>type cmd>Ctrl+Shift+Enter

Then input these commands line after line, hit enter after each line. And remember to replace things.

takeown G:\Users\USERNAME
icacls G:\Users\USERNAME /grant:r Administrators:(OI)(CI)F /T
taskkill /f /im explorer.exe & explorer.exe

Remember to replace G:\Users\USERNAME with the actual path to the user profile folder, specifically you need to replace the USERNAME with actual user name and G: with the actual drive letter.

The first command takes ownership of the folder and the second grants you access to the folder, the third restarts explorer.exe, after these commands you should have no problem openning the user profile folder.

You can't get into that folder because you don't have the permission to the folder in the Access Control List, after you have modified it you should have no problem accessing the folder.

Note that the commands need administrator privileges in order to work, though I presume that you have admin rights.

If the commands were successful however you still can't open the folder after explorer is restarted, reboot your computer.