"Access Denied" on folders I need!

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baroquejim

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I just got an enclosure for an old HD that I saved from a laptop that broke a year ago. It's linked up to my new laptop and everything's working fine....

...except that the two folders I need to access, the ones I bought the enclosure for, my 30gigs of music and my photographs, give me an "access denied" error when I try to open them.

They also show "0 bytes" as a folder size, but I know the stuff is there. Everything else on the HD works fine. I'm guessing that somewhere along the way, the permissions for these folders were changed, and now I can't access them because I'm on a new boot of Windows XP and the security IDs are different. I can't remember ever changing any permissions, but nonetheless.

So I've researched the problem, and found my way into the Microsoft Knowledge Base. It tells me to clear the "use simple file sharing" option as part of the solution. I have no such option, and I suspect because that option is only available on XP Pro.

So what to do? I refuse to believe that I can never access these folders again!
 
You need to take ownership of the folders your are trying to access or the entire drive if you need it. Seems like you already found the Microsoft KB, but yes it applies to pro. Inside XP home do you have an ACL that you can control? Meaning when you right click a folder you have a security tab? I doubt it, but worth a look.I thought there was a hack to disable simple file sharing on the home version of XP.
 
go to safe mode, right click a folder and permission should be there. or you can cut and paste those files to somewhere else in safe mode
 
EricB said:
go to safe mode, right click a folder and permission should be there. or you can cut and paste those files to somewhere else in safe mode

I think only problem with that is that USB functionality is disabled in safe mode isnt it? Thus the drive wouldnt show up if its an external HD. I think.
 
Win2kpatcher said:
I think only problem with that is that USB functionality is disabled in safe mode isnt it? Thus the drive wouldnt show up if its an external HD. I think.

duh. my bad

bartpe or linux time
 
If you don't have ownership of the folders, you'll need to change ownership to yourself. You may be able to do this as an administrator on your current machine...you may have to directly boot to that drive as the local admin to do it. It'll take some tinkering.
 
Joy to the world another ocassion where Linux is the easiest method. Try booting with a live CD to get your files from your computer from there you can move them where you wish, change permissions once on the linux filesystem, or export them to removable media.
 
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