Windows 7 permission denied error

I've tried every single solution out there and nothing works. Here's the deal; I had WIndows XP. I backed up some stuff to an a drive. I installed Windows 7. Now I'm trying to access the files I backed up and I get access denied errors.

Things I've done that haven't worked:

Changed ownership to my main user account
Ran cacls over the offending folder
Ran explorer as admin to access files
Gave full (recursive) permissions to just about every network entity north of the equator

I did see the "old" NTFS account S1-34534-3453(and so forth) and replaced myself as owner/admin/omnipotent being.

Nothing has worked thus far. Any help is appreciated.

As an aside, could a dual boot with linux access the files?

Nick Swarr

Posted 2010-07-18T15:54:45.720

Reputation: 171

While I don't have a direct answer to your question, if you do have Linux installed, by all means try it from there. If not, you could also try it from a live CD of any distribution, such as Ubuntu. – Emory Bell – 2010-07-18T16:08:22.353

I did have Ubuntu 10 live disc laying around but it failed to complete loading. I'll have to check out another distro.

EDIT: Getting Linux Mint. Looks cool :) – Nick Swarr – 2010-07-18T16:16:11.107

Answers

Unfortunately, I finally figured out what the issue was. I hadn't been paying attention to the color of the text for the files and directories. They are green indicating that the files are encrypted. It seems that XP pro encrypts files by default? Not altogether sure but what I'm reading is that those files are gone...no way to retrieve them. So, this wasn't a Win7 issue at all.

Nick Swarr

Posted 2010-07-18T15:54:45.720

Reputation: 171

I've definitely run into this numerous times doing data recovery for friends. The solution that works every time is amusing: borrow a friend's Mac. They just ignore the file permissions :-) If you want to copy it back to your PC, just copy it to another drive.

Stacey Hanson

Posted 2010-07-18T15:54:45.720

Reputation: 916

3A Linux Live CD will also do the job nicely. – Andrew Moore – 2010-07-18T17:19:50.553

+1 for Live CD. That way, you don't have to install anything and risk messing up the data on the drive even more. – nhinkle – 2010-07-18T19:56:35.240

So I did get the Linux Mint live CD running and it gets access denied errors on the files as well. I've never seen that before...is there something special I need to do to bypass the NTFS security? – Nick Swarr – 2010-07-18T20:58:05.493

Have you tried using the Windows tool "Takeown" to take ownership of the files? See here.

Jens

Posted 2010-07-18T15:54:45.720

Reputation: 629

Thanks for the tip. I tried it but it still doesn't work. Still no access. – Nick Swarr – 2010-07-20T02:35:30.670