Retrieving files from HD.

I just want to see is this would be a decent idea to get some files off the hard drive from my old computer and move it to the new one. Here is the basic problem....

I put a simple password on my old computer, because we had babysitters coming over and I was downloading some stuff, and forgot to take it off. Well my computer went bad, MB, and I still have the hard drive. But now I can't put this hard drive in our external drive and retrieve the files from my profile because of the password. We have another computer for our daughter, rarely used, that I could use but would it be advisable to just slap the hard drive in the computer long enough, as the primary, to remove the password and the move the files using the external HD?

I really don't want to mess around with reactivating windows and such on another computer since I'll have to that some point in the future with Roz's.