"Access is denied." help (not basic question)

I've been trying to fix my friends computer whenever he booted it said "system32/config is corrupted or missing"

Well I followed Microsofts directions for that and it ends up starting on a different user and all settings wiped
I've since gave up on that and now we're on to partitioning the hdd and backing up files

problem is... it won't let me access "documents and settings/user/desktop" (his hdd is slaved to my computer at the moment) to save his most important files

I've done everything I can to try and access it..
cacls "D:\documents and settings\user" /T /E /G myke:F
access is denied.

(working from the user directory)
cacls desktop
Access is denied.

it won't even let me view what its rights even are

I've done it normally
I've done it in safe mode
I've done it on the administrator account
I've done it upside down (yeah at this point I'm losing my mind so I threw in a joke)

when everything fails what the hell are you supposed to do to access the data that's there but windows OS is saying "Hey screw off"

Windows XP Home
-Mike

Note. In my case, I had to install the HD from one computer to another because the MB had quit. So, I did a repair install with the HD as the boot drive on another system. That allowed me access to the files on the HD, which I copied to DVD.

Windows Help & Support, search for "take ownership"

Mike.

install the HD disable simple file sharing, advanced,security, change the policy to your current system user name. I've done this on plenty of systems.

go to advanced take over onwership of doc and setten