Serious Computer Problems

Ok so the other day I was restarting my computer (Windows XP Home Edition) and all of a sudden it pretty much went all crazy and started looping through the start up screen and flashing a blue error screen. So basically I’m screwed and can’t get it to startup.

I was planning to reformat my computer soon anyways, however the problem is I still had a few files I wanted to get off my HD, in particular a folder of my desktop which contains 1.5 gigs worth of valuable files. After a bunch of failed attempts at repairing the operating system, I took out my hard drive, hooked it onto another computer and got a lot of stuff off but I still can’t get to my Desktop of my old user profile.

When I try and open my profile via Documents and Settings/myUser it tells me it’s restricted, access denied etc. I suspect this is because I used to have a password on my user account and so it’s protected now or something. So how can I get rid of or at least get around the password so I can get to my Desktop files as well as my Documents when I have my HD hooked up to the other computer. When my HD is connected to the malfunctioning computer, it’s original location, I can at least get far enough to access the command prompt and registry but that’s it. Is there some registry value I can delete to unprotect my user profile? Whatever it takes it doesn’t matter as long as I get the files as I will be reformatting my computer as soon as I get the files off the HD anyways.

Thanks,

Fargate