I have an 80gb drive that has screwed up and will not go into the log in screen for users. If I put this drive into another machine I can access all the files except those that were under my log in (administrator) as they were password protected. I know the password but cannot get to these files as I presume these can only be accessed via the original operating system/setups
does anybody know a way round this as I am desperate to get to some old photo's.

did you try booting into safe mode ,hit f8 on bootup

Yes I've tried Safe Mode and that also freezes with a blank screen also tried re-installing XP without format and several tries on the repair console. I can retrieve the info off the disk in another machine as a slve drive but can't access password protected files even though I know the password I suspect it's because there is no way of entering a password on a slave drive