Hey guys,
 
Correct me here if im wrong please.  A buddy of mine just got a computer that a friend of his gave him.  He said he could have the computer but he wanted the pics and MP3's off of it.  He can not remember the password to login to the box.  It's running XP.  We tried a few 100 different passwords.  
 
I told him the way would could get around it is to buy another hard drive, load the OS.  Then we could hook the other drive up as the secondary and copy the files over that way.  With the OS on the new drive i should be able to access the drive with said pics and mp3's on it without the password correct?  
 
Thanks in advance.

If it is a cmos pass, then you can reset it by jumper or removing the battery for 30 secs. If it is XP pass, then you can either plug the hd in another rig or use  the os disks.

Not if he made his folders private. Boot into Safe Mode and login as Administrator and change the account password.
 
Grumpy

Inserting a 2nd drive and installing a new o/s on that will allow you to access the files.
 
See this article for more ideas, including free recovery tools.