Hey Guys, I have a 2nd Harddrive with WindowsXP on it. All I want to do is navigate to the files and pull them off that drive so I can reformat the HD.

Before I just installed linux, I had WinXP on it and when I tried to navigate to the Files in >documentsettings>users>mydocs I would get "you don't have permissions or password protected"

I found this post on how to "unprotect a windows HD"
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=724383

But now that I have Linux on my PC how do I do that?

Will Linux even navigate the folders correctly? I haven't tried yet but I don't want to go through the trouble of installing the other drive if it is not going to work anyways.

Can someone let me know if Linux will navigate that disc and if so what I will need to unprotect it?

Thanks!

I have never had any problem to access my ntfs partitions here. Notice however that there's only read support and not write. SO all you have to do is to enable ntfs file system in your kernel (if your win xp partition is ntfs) and then mount it and get the files you want. I dont know if there is any kind of password protection but I have passwords and permissons set for my files under win xp and I browse them normally from my linux.

good luck.

If your files on an NTFS volume are protected only by filesystem permissions then you should be OK. But, if your files were encrypted and password protected then you are out of luck. In this case you need to recover them from within Windows ... somehow.

Yes they are only protected by the filesystem not encrypted. I am using Ubuntu and love it so far.

How do I enable the NTFS file system in my kernel?
Thanks

I do not know about Ubuntu, but I believe it has everything ready to read NTFS. As soon as you mount your XP partition appropriate module will be autoloaded into kernel.

You have to know where your windows partition is:

to list available partitions:
fdisk -l

Then, say your /dev/hda1 is your Rwindows XP partition:
mount -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/RwindowsXP (as root or as a user that can mount)

After that you can browse your windows stuff.

If it doenst have ntfs support you have to go to:
/usr/src/linux/

and run:
make menuconfig

then select:
Files Systems -> NTF files system support (read only), please dont add the write support cause it is experimental.

Then you have to recompile:
make && make modules_install (for 2.6 kernel)

and copy the bzImage to the /boot:
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/new_kernel

Edit your grub/lilo. Check all this instructions against your distro specific instructions, ok?

good luck.