Hey guys. You all seem to know what you're talking about.

I had a 2001(?) HP Pavilion desktop computer with XP on it. My user name had a password on it, and one day the computer just gave up on me. Power supply we think. I bought the cheapest computer best buy had, cause I was broke and needed one... (eMachine T3422). This happened last summer.
I just took the hard drive out of the old computer and put it in the new one.
At first, I couldn't get into the "my documents" folder. Going into the "sharing and security" option on the right click menu, I ended up networking it? It got me into the folder. However, almost all the files seem to be lacking all of their data. I was able to access and update my resume, however *most of the pictures and other files did not work at all.

I switched the ribbon inside the computer so that the old hard drive was the only one hooked up. It wouldn't start. Put it back...

I need to get past this access denied stuff on the old hard drive, but I'm not sure how. I had found a thread on here that told how to do it, but since my computer runs off of the newer harddrive, i'm not it would work the same.


Thanks in advance for your time and help!!!

you cannot put an old hard drive with an OS on it in a new computer. The OS is configured for the old hardware. You will need to install it as a secondary drive via USB to retrieve files (if you can).

You will need to install a new or fresh hard drive (or erase your old drive and reformat it) in your new system. Then you can use the old drive as a secondary drive once it is formatted.

You need to put the old hard disk in as a SLAVE if it is an IDE hard disk.
Then you need to take Ownership of the 'old' data, as described in one of the Readme: posts at the top in the Guides and Solved Issues forum.
That should give you back all your old files. You can forget about any OS or programs from that old disk, they simply won't work, until freshly re-installed.