Accessing HDD files from protected user account

Longish story of woe, please bear with me.

My son had an account on an E-Machine that died. The mother board blew and
I see no reason to buy another (which will burn out in a similar 2 year
period). He is not sure if he has any files of importance on the HDD (yes,
I have discussed the joys of backups and the whole eggs in one basket
concept). He would like to be able to look at them and copy them to another
drive.

I installed the HDD as a primary in another computer and it will not boot.
Installed as slave and it boots and reads fine, except for the files under
my son's account, which are protected. Sooo, the bottom line is, how do I
get access to the files?

I have ...

.... told him they are likely inaccessible, don't hold your breathe.
.... tried opening them with windows explorer => Permission error
.... tried sharing them for access over the network (so a login password can
be used, but it doesn't even do this). => Permission error
.... created a new account of the computer with the old user name and
password. => No joy
.... tried mapping the folder as a drive. = > No joy


I open to suggestions. Obviously this is a digital life lesson for him, but
is there a way to access these files? I understand if posting an answer is
not a valid solution. If this is the case, feel free to email me at
vestprog2 and the at sign and then yahoo and then a dot and then com (yes, I
hate spam-bots).


Thank you for any insight,
Bill D.