Unable to open Word folder because of "access privileges" problem

[amis]

I run on Windows XP and recently had to reinstall Windows because of some
problems. In the previous version, we had a number of users, each with
personal password. Some Word folders were created with the security option to
make these folders 'private'. This meant that other users were not able to
access these folders. Now with the Wndows re-install, all these user profiles
have gone and there seems to be no way of accessing these old Word folders.
When we try to open the old folders the error message is' user does not have
access privileges'. We know the old passwords etc. but they are no longer
required. Can anyone suggest a way of getting these folders to open?

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

I run on Windows XP and recently had to reinstall Windows because of
some problems. In the previous version, we had a number of users,
each with personal password. Some Word folders were created with the
security option to make these folders 'private'. This meant that
other users were not able to access these folders. Now with the
Wndows re-install, all these user profiles have gone and there seems
to be no way of accessing these old Word folders. When we try to open
the old folders the error message is' user does not have access
privileges'. We know the old passwords etc. but they are no longer
required. Can anyone suggest a way of getting these folders to open?

Well - this is not really an Office issue - best posted in an XP group like
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general, as it concerns NTFS permissions in the
file system itself.

That said -

a) how did you do your reinstall? As in, a repair/parallel, or format/clean
install?
b) were any of the users using EFS (encrypted file system) to protect
folders?
c) have you tried taking ownership of the data folders in question? See
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421


Passwords do not apply to folders/files in WinNT-based operating systems.
Once you have access to the folder/files, you can still use your old Word
passwords to open documents. The two are not related.