File Sharing Causing Problems w/ Data Backup

[EXCellR8]

Well it didn't take long for my sister to break her computer again, and this time it's being a real pain to sort out. The computer was hit by, what I'm guessing is, a worm. The computer wont boot XP Home Edition normally and this pop-up message keeps appearing on the log on screen: "This shutdown was initiated by NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" and then it gives the computer 59 seconds until it restarts. However, it doesn't do this if I boot the computer into Safe Mode...

I did a little searching and the name "Baster Worm" came up a lot. I followed some removal procedures here and there but nothing helped; the system kept restarting on me when trying to boot into normal mode with that pop-up. So, I figured I was just wasting my time and decided a reformat was best. I use Acronis True Image on the computers at home so I could reformat the drives and apply one of the disk images to it afterward. Not a problem.

The problem is trying to backup all of her stuff. Little did I know she has hundreds, possibly thousands, of RAW photos stored on her drive. Now normally I wouldn't care but I don't want to put that stress on my invaluable USB drive just for some lousy pictures. I could do it in parts, but that would take forever I'm afraid.

So, I wanted to install her drive in my shop computer as the slave and just copy everything over. Problem is, I get the Access Denied error whenever I try to get the files. She had a password and private settings enabled but I went in and changed that (in Safe Mode). So now, her account is not an admin account and the files shouldn't be private. However, I still can't access the files on another system. Thoughts?

Sorry for the long post...

 

[Tmagic650]

Install a "clean" hard drive in your sisters computer. install the OS. Attach the old drive with the files you need as a slave or 2nd SATA and scan this infected drive for viruses. Once it is clean, recover the pictures or any other data needed. Keep the second drive just in case your sister's computer goes down again

 

[EXCellR8]

Well, I would have already tried that if I had known for sure that the files on the original drive would be accessible. Like I said, I did try the drive as a slave on my shop computer, but the files were in a folder that read 0kb and I could not access them. If this is something that can only be solved by using the computer the drive originated in then it's worth a shot. However, I might have to wipe the second drive anyways because I only have a 20GB hard drive available to install as a primary. This is going to be a real project...

 

[EXCellR8]

I still cannot access the files on the former primary disk (now slaved) under any other accounts but hers, no matter what I do it says access denied. And to make matters worse, I might not even be able to do that anymore. I have a bad feeling that the drive is going to fail soon and i can't even boot from it anymore. It gives me a disk boot failure message now after hanging for 3 mins or so. I need to be able to access those files while the drive is slaved. What can I do?