Cant open xp files on external hard drive on vista

[nobby999]

Hi

i had a windows xpSP2 PC which i had backed up on to an external hard drive.

That PC appeared to die and so i bought a new desktop with Vista on. With regards to photos i am able to open up some files, however the most recent that were added im unable to open. It says you do not have permission.
i have followed several guides that i have found on line to open these but they dont work.

Why is it i can open some files on this external hard drive and nt others? Typically the ones i cant open have very important sentiment to me

Try this (these are the steps on W7, but I think they are the same for
Vista):

- Right click on the root directory
- Go to settings and select the Security tab.
- Select the Advanced button
- Change owner to your user name
- Exit and go back to change the access permissions

[nobby999]

thank you for that.

It appears im either not managing to change the permissions correctly or there is still a problem.

When i try and open a photo it says "photo gallery cant open this picture because you do not have permission to access this file location"

[nobby999]

After many weeks of trying to get my XP machine to work (and after buying a new vista machine) it finally came back to life.

I accessed the files i was having problems with on the external hard drive. It turned out that the files had been encrypted.

By checking out the original files properties, i believe going into advanced, i deselected the encryption and copied over again.

MAGIC
I can now access those files that i thought i had lost