I have tried that, vmware fuison recognizes it as the wrong file...aka boot camp.
Yes as I previously stated with a FireWire enclosure Fusion will recognize it (wrongly) as a Boot Camp partition however you might be able to get it up an running as Fusion will attempt to prepare it to run as a Virtual Machine although I have had to manually inject information into the Windows Registry and add a couple of drives, one for keyboard and one for the hard drive but it is doable if you know what your doing.
I have another virtual machine on my computer. I have also tried opening my files through that. It has locked out accessing those files on a different computer. aka i can't get in the owner files to transfer those.
If you don't need to run it as a Virtual Machine and you just need to get the User Data then you could attach it via a USB enclosure and attach it to your existing Virtual Machine although you should be able to just access it through OS X if your just trying to retrieve User Data. Depending on how you choose to access it if your having problems accessing the target User's Folders/Files you will either have to take Ownership of the Folders/Files (if accessing it from another Windows computer) or access the Disk as the Root User using sudo (if accessing it from OS X).
Are there any other sugestions on how to do this. I do not have another physical machine to just put the hard drive into.
Without another Physical Machine if you want to run it as a Virtual Machine you will need to use a FireWire enclosure to get proper Raw Disk Access or if your're just wanting the User Data then a USB enclosure is the easiest. As long as the NTFS Volume, (I'm assuming it's not FAT32), is not Encrypted then you should be able to access the entire drive however the User's Home Folder can require the accessing Account to take Ownership if accessing it from Windows and this is a Windows issue not a Fusion issue. In other words whether you attach this Drive to a Virtual Machine or another Physical Machine if you cannot access something then you have to take Ownership using an Administrator's Account if direct access from an Administrator's Account is denied.
You didn't say what OS you're running on the Virtual Machine you have however have a look at: How to take ownership of a file or a folder in Windows XP
IMO The easiest, fastest and safest way to access and retrieve the User Data is attaching the drive using USB and then booting the Virtual Machine or Physical Machine with a Knoppix 5.1.1 CD/DVD/ISO Image depending on virtual or physical and then run as Root and you should have no problem accessing the files to copy them. I've used this method for many years retrieving user data is similar cases and the reason I do it this way is it access the drive by default as Read Only thus not modifying the Drive in any manner and this is why I said "and safest way to access" and until I had a binary image, like a Ghost Image, of the User's Hard Drive I never access it in a manner that can modify the contents in any manner.
