Help with a locked out file on hard drive

[E7mack96]

I need to get to a file folder on my hard drive.



THe hard drive failed (operating system - from the kids messing it up) and i bought a new one and formatted,installed operating system, yada- yada.



I piggybacked the old hard drive to the new hard drive. THe old one is called "e" and the new one is now "c" The file folder in question from the old hard drive was password protected, and shows it as there, but as zero bytes. THe funny thing is norton can scan it, showing in excess of 200 files. The problem is the file folder is marked as unavailable, and I cannot figure out how to let the old hard drive know it is me trying to look at it.



Any Ideas??



Tony

 

[Royk]

Just a couple of wild suggestions, for what they're worth. Try booting into safe mode and see what happens. You could also go in at the command line (DOS C:\ prompt) level, go to that folder and see if your files show up when you type "dir". If so, copy them using the command line over to your new drive.



I'm sure someone more knowlegeable than me will chime in eventually.





Roy

 

[p-Bar]

Roy is on the right track just find your old DOS book and get to the E: prompt and just use the DOS commands . You can probably Google it and find them. I would copy it to A: drive (floppy)

 

[rkressg]

I hate to suggest a Scan Disk, as it can actually destroy the old data.

Can you see the files/folders in Explorer? If so, you can right-mouse-click on the files, choose properties. In the new window, go to the security tab, click on the Advanced button in the bottom.
In the new window, uncheck the box Inheret and check the box Replace, then under the Owner tab, type in your username and check the box replace owner. Click OK a few times (in this and the previous windows). This might take a few minutes, but should work.

If you can not see the files in Explorer, you could try a file recovery program on the internet. Most of these programs are not free. Google and see what you get.

 

[Joe G.]

Which version of Windows are you running? If it's Vista, you can run Windows Explorer in administrator mode. That should allow you access to the file so you can change or remove the password.