need help accessing protected files...

So, a friend came to me with a dilemma and I can't seem to find a way around it short of semi-drastic measures. He had an old emachines that he's since sent the way of the dodo, saving only the hard drive so he could copy over his old files (mp3's, etc...) Unfortunately, he had a number of windows security protections set up on these directories, and now they cant be accessed through windows. All I get is an error that says "[directory name] is not accessable. Acess Denied." I have it installed as a slave, as it can't be installed as a primary drive because the e-machines bundled OS won't allow it to boot from anything but the original emachines. So here I sit trying to figure out how to recover these files. The only options that come to mind off the top of my head are: 1) format the drive and use recovery software. or 2) install dos. Does anyone have any better ideas? Thanks in advance.

Try Overclockix, or Knoppix, run from the cdrom but might be able to move the files to a different hard drive then recover them thru windows?

Any live CD will allow you to copy the files over to another drive or upload to a web drive.

Assuming your friend is running XP...

How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=308421

yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say, take ownership of the file, that should work, i had the same problem a few weeks ago