Folder Access denied after reinstallation

[Jacek]

I reformatted my C: drive last week and reinstalled Windows XP but now I am no longer able to access my "username" folder. Whenever I try to access it, it says 'Access Denied'.

I even tried accessing it from safe mode and also from the command prompt, still no go. In the properties of the folder it says it has 0 bytes.

What I remember is that:-
1. I had not changed the Computer Name during my installation.
2. Also Username of the user has remained unchanged.

Is this the cause of the problem? Can anyone help me please?

[Rajesh4mLA]

Boot into Safe Mode/Administrator account, then you should be able to access and move the data around.

[Steve123]

You can have ownership of a protected file in order to access it. You must be logged on to Windows as an administrator in order to change security permissions for a file or a folder.

To take ownership of a folder, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message (if one appears).
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, or click Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group. If you want to take ownership of the contents of the folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
5. Click OK, and then click Yes when you receive the following message:
"You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folder name. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control?"
All permissions will be replaced if you click Yes.

Note folder name is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of.

6. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and its contents.

[Marthaz]

This issue may occur if the folder that you cannot open was created on an NTFS file system volume by using a previous installation of Windows, and then installing Windows XP. This issue may occur although you enter the correct user name and password. This issue occurs because the security ID for the user has changed. Although you use the same user name and password, your security ID no longer matches the security ID of the owner of the folder that you cannot open.

To resolve this issue, you must turn off Simple File Sharing, and then take ownership of the folder as explained by Steve.