accessing 'my documents' on an external drive

I've had to buy an enclosure for Lappy's hard drive since I couldn't turn the laptop on anymore... I was able to copy everything except for the files in "My Documents" - which was annoying since I saved most of my files in that folder.

I kept getting "Access Denied."

After googling for a few minutes, I found a solution to enable access to that folder.

Main steps:
To take ownership of a folder, follow these steps:
1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message (if one appears).
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, or click Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
5. Click OK, and then click Yes when you receive the following message:
You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?

All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.
Note folder name is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of.
6. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and its contents.

Users of Win XP Home have to log in Safe Mode (Admin priv user) first.