Topic: Removing old installation

[Reno]

I have an old installation of windows xp on a secondary 200gig hard drive. I have about 130gigs of data stored in accessible folders, but I have what's left of an old windows installation on there too. I can't even enter the user account without it telling me access denied. Any ideas on how to remove the old installation without formatting the harddisk?

[Simon]

Is the secondary hard drive partitioned?  If so, this may help you along the way:-

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/888023

[Reno]

All hds with data on them are partitioned. It's isn't dual booting at all. The second harddrive originally was installed in another machine. The second installation is just locked from this account even though this is an administrator account so is the original one on the other hd.

[Sandra]

Unless you can put it back in the original pc, or at least one with the same mobo or IDE controllers, then I think that you are going to struggle Bob 

You may end up having to delete the MBR and then maybe use a recovery program to recover the data but bear in mind that it may not retrieve all your data intact.

[Reno]

The data I want is in accessible folders. The windows installation and old accounts are not. Is the answer still the same? There is no way to remove the restrictions and do away with the old windows accounts and directory?

[Sandra]

I dont think so Bob, to get access to the user accounts then you have to be able to boot into windows.
As the OS was installed on a different pc then it wont boot on this pc.

Maybe if you could do the Mergeide reg fix thing in Dos then that may allow it to boot up in your current pc but I am not sure what the DOS commands would be to do it in.