Funny old world...
On one thread I find myself supporting Microsoft's proprietary NTFS filesystem and on the other I find myself supporting Linux!
Both good OSes IMHO, but with different approaches and philosophies.
And prices of course.....
goates
"With the passwords on NTFS, you can't get them back, at least not by any means the average person could do."
It's quite easy, unless your "average" user is very dim (admittedly, lots are).
Getting into a physically accessible Windows box when you've forgotten either your password or the Administrators password is trivial.
Get a friend to download and burn one of the innumerable Windows password reset disks available on the WWW and Bob's your uncle.
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ is one of many.
No friends? Then you might have a problem....
BTW, MS does encourage people to make an "official" Password Reset Disk for just this situation.
PS: Getting in is one thing and reading encrypted files is quite another.
If you've encrypted your files then you're out of luck. Without the correct password modern encryting file systems are effectively unbreakable. But most people who encrypt files are aware of this and stash copies away safely.