Access root of system over network share

Question

I'm migrating to a new Windows 7 box from an old WinXP box (about 5 years old).

The new machine is fully set up and running, and my preference is to not swap drives around (I've got terrible luck when it comes to fiddling with hardware, I always break something).

I know there's an admin share of my WinXP box for each root drive (C$ and F$ in this case). I also have each of them as a sharing folder. On my local network, I can see the shares for both.

The problem I'm having is getting files & folders which require admin access onto my Windows 7 machine - it tells me that I must have admin access to copy certain files (such as the documents and settings folder) from the XP box, and to contact my network administrator.

I asked myself what to do, but I was entirely unhelpful.

What steps do I have to take to open the WinXP box's network shares with admin access, so I can do a full-hard drive copy?

Answer 1

You won't want to copy all of the settings out of your XP computer and migrate them into Windows 7 - starting over with all of those is a much better way to do that. The errors you are getting are due to system files that reside in the profile folders on the XP computer. So your best bet would be to just copy out the data you want (My Documents, Desktop, Favorites, etc). I know it looks easier to just copy the whole profile folder, but you really don't want that whole thing.

Answer 2

A friend pointed me to the Windows Easy Transfer tool, which helped me move things much better than a simple file copy, so I thought I'd update my question with the answer I found.