BleepingComputer.com: How to recover desktop files from HDD w/ multiple users

'Tis the holiday season, and time to send out the holiday cards! Apparently, however, our address list was saved on my wife's desktop on the hard drive of the dead laptop, but I can't find it on the rescued drive. Her desktop doesn't show up as an option under her user name when I browse the transferred contents of the disk on the new disk. It appears that my desktop items are not visible either under my user name. So the question is: How do I locate those desktop files? They've got to be there somewhere! I found a shortcut to the file but searching from it is fruitless. In the spirit of the holidays, any ideas? Of course, my wife already bought the holiday cards so I need to find this file or the whole thing is shot!

Cheers,

X

The path to the desktop is <Drive>:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Desktop

Try showing hidden files ( http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-see-hidden-files-in-windows/ ), maybe that's why you're not seeing it.

Thanks Domster. I tried showing hidden files, and I tried the pathway as suggested above, both with no luck. I was thinking it has something to do with permissions maybe?

Also, I found the shortcuts to the desktop files but then can't link them back to the originals... they have to be there somewhere dont they?

Desktop...is under Docs & Settings.

Docs & Setting files created on Hard Drive A...need special treatment, a process called "taking ownership" in order to be read from Hard Drive/System B.

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

This allows the "new system" access to system files from the old.

Louis