How to access Data of a Password Protected User in Windows XP in Case the PC Fails to Boot

From ArticleWorld

Sometimes, your PC may fail to boot and, before trying to do anything else, you may want to backup your most important files. Trying to access your files from another computer will not work if the computer is password protected, and if you do not have any experience with a Linux environment in order to use a live CD, you may want to try another one, especially if you are familiar with DOS.

You will need a bootable Windows XP CD-ROM for this.

Steps

First of all, you will need to boot from your Windows XP CD. At the setup screen, press R to use the Recovery Console.

The recovery program will ask you to select your Windows folder. This is generally C:\WINDOWS, but this obviously depends on what you have chosen when you installed the system. The recovery console is a familiar, DOS-like environment. You may want to get a list of the available commands. Type 'HELP' (without the quotes) and press enter.

Now, change current directory to the one of the user's whose files you want to backup. You do this using the CD command, usually by typing:

CD "C:\Documents and Settings\<USER>"

without the quotes, and replacing <USER> with the username. Now, in order to backup the My Documents folder, you should change the current directory to My Documents (using the same CD command). To get a list of all the files in there, use the DIR command. To copy a file to a folder called "backup" on another hard drive or partition, use:

CP file.ext D:\backup