Toshiba Satellite l40-17u Hard Disk 'Access Denied C'

[Jahanara]

My laptop is all of a sudden displaying a access denied message:

C:\ is not accessible.
Access is denied.

if I try to open my C Drive on which the Windows is installed. I am using a Toshiba Satellite L40-17u laptop. My laptop is running on Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium Edition operating system. This is happening since the last 5 days. How to overcome this error?

[Quentin]

Have you checked the rights that are allocated to your profile. It seems that your profile is not having the Administrative rights to open the Windows Drive folder and thus the C drive access denied message is pooped up. So first you need to check if your profile has administrative rights or not. If the problem persist do reply back.

[Jahanara]

I have made a check to my profile and it is having all the rights. I have two profiles on my laptop and both have the administrative rights and both are getting the same message on trying to access the C drive. I am also not able to open the Control Panel > Add/Remove program Window and also not able to load any new applications or softwares.

[Bon-Z]

Have you tried creating a new profile with Administrative rights and accessing the C drive. It can be that there is some issue with your existing profile which resist you from accessing the C drive. So you try creating a new profile and then Delete the Old profiles and check if you are able to access the C drive or not

[Curt]

For me this is an error displayed because of a virus infection. I had a same message being displayed on my Acer Aspire One laptop. It used to display D drive not accessible when I clicked on the D drive. When I loaded Avast anti-virus on my system and carried the Boot Time Scan it tracked a virus that was causing this error. SO you may also either try scanning your laptop with your installed anti-virus or use Avast anti-virus.