I had this problem where I took over a computer running Windows XP which had been owned by, and still contained many documents owned by, a previous user. Getting access to these files was not easy and required, IIRC, opening them as administrator. Then I came across this post from the HowToGeek which relates to a registry hack to add a “Take Ownership” option to the context menu in Windows Explorer.

The post says that the hack applies only to Vista and Windows 7, but I used it in Windows XP and it worked perfectly.

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