Get full access to my old drive from a fresh install?

[bizzybody]

I did the files and settings transfer wizard in Vista Ultimate when upgrading from an 80 gig to a 500 gig in my laptop. That brought most things over but not get everything.

Now there's large amounts of the C: partition on the old drive which Windows won't let me access. How do I reset permissions on everything on the old drive to give Everyone full control? I don't care if that would make it unusable to boot from, I'm just going to erase it all after I get the files I need.

Nothing is compressed or password protected or encrypted, so using such brute force methods won't cause problems.

I've tried the Take Ownership registry hack. That'll work on one folder at a time, but some things I need to go digging around in have many subfolders several levels deep. Take Ownership also doesn't work on all folders. There's some it just won't do a thing to.

Gaining access to everything but the recycle bin folders and System Volume Information is what I need to do.

IIRC, I could set up a PC and install ye olde XP original release and wouldn't have this problem. But that's a bit of overkill just to go spelunking around in my old hard drive contents.

Edited October 14, 2010 by bizzybody