missing Address Book (Windows XP)

[amz1]

Maybe this question should go in the Windows forum rather than the OE one but I'll try here first. My old computer died but the hard drive survived. I'm in the process of copying all my old data over from the old hard drive on to my new computer. However, I can't seem to find my address book anywhere on the old hard drive.

Two questions about this: first, is it possible that the address book would be in some other format than a .wab file? I vaguely remember that Microsoft had (has?) a couple of different address book programs. I've searched the entire hard drive and found no *.wab files. I also tried searching for *.pab (the Outlook address book I believe, which I wasn't using, but hey, I'm desperate). No luck there either. Should I be searching for some other file format?

Second, when I try going to /Documents and Settings/Abraham [on the old hard drive, not on my new computer], which is where I would expect to find the old .wab file (and probably some other stuff too), I get an error message that Access is denied. Maybe this is because Windows is treating this as files belonging to another user? However I have administrative privileges so I would assume that I could access them if there was something there? I tried logging in as the Administrator and I got the same error message when I tried to explore the folder. However if I right click the folder and check its properties it shows me that the folder has 0 bytes, 0 files, etc. This doesn't seem right since this was the location for Documents and Settings on the old computer (not, thankfully, the location of My Documents, which I had stashed on a separate partition).

Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance for any advice.

regards,
Abraham Z.

[Liberty Raynes]

Do you have Windows set up to show system files, and set to search in System folders? It should be in C:documents and settingsusernameapplication datamicrosoftaddress book.

[amz1]

Yes, that wasn't the problem. It turned out that the issue was that I didn't have ownership of the Documents and Settings/username folder (and subfolders). As admin you'd think you'd have access to everything but apparently not. Anyway, I was able to resolve it by going to Properties>Security>Advanced and then changing the ownership. Thanks for the suggestion though.
regards,
Abraham Z.