Removing password protection on an old hard drive

Hello fellow forum members, and thanks to all who participate in creating this. I have an old Dell netbook that crashed (literally) on the ground, broke the screen. Hard drive is intact and accessible by a USB device, but that pesky password I made up to protect the files under my personal username, even though I know it, doesn't appear anywhere for me to access the document. I haven't found references made to it, but the hard drive has Windows XP operating system on it and I am running 8 on the computer I have now. Don't know if that has anything to do with not being able to get control panel to open on that one. If anyone has any ideas, shoot! I'm out of them, trying to continue writing a book I had started on that computer and foolishly didn't save elsewhere. Thanks!
KB

The Windows tutorial for this is ok but after hitting the advanced settings button of the Security tab, where they type in "new user" you need to type in Everyone then hit Ok etc. set for full read/write permissions as desired. Set the permissions on the Sharing tab as well.

First link is Windows sharing tutorial for XP.
How to Share and Set Permissions for Folders and Files Using Windows XP

This is the link I made which shows a bit more detail but it's for Windows 7.
HDD sharing - Windows 7 Help Forums

Important step is adding Everyone to the advanced settings of the security tab.

Thank you!

I'll try that when I wake up in the morning-giving up the battle for tonight, I'm afraid. Hope it works!