# Solved: "Access Denied" error during file copy....



## mark069 (Oct 25, 2008)

Long story:

I have a hard drive from an older HP computer that was originally formatted under Windows 98 where the computer OS became corrupted and the original Windows 98 CD restore disk was damaged. I wanted to copy these files onto a CD or another hard disk.

I tried to mount the old HP hard drive on a newer Windows XP computer in order to copy the old files. XP would not recognize the old HP drive as a slave drive so I made it the master drive and tried to install XP onto the old HP drive. XP said it had to run scan disk first so I let it but the install eventually failed because there was not enough space on this drive....

I bought a new Windows 98 restore disk on e-bay and installed Windows 98 on the old PC with another hard drive I had. Then I added the old HP hard drive as a slave drive and IT MOUNTED!!!

I can view the files but when I try to copy them or open them , I get an "Access Denied" error. This is presumably because Windows XP changed the file permissions during the scan disk process but now I am stuck because Windows 98 isn't able to read or copy these files. 

I have heard that logging in as administrator under Windows 98 might give me access to this drive. If so, how do I do that? Any other suggestions?

I realize now I should have never let XP scan and alter this drive but that's "water under the bridge" .....


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## ZeRealBigBoss (Mar 17, 2007)

http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/

I have never tried that on W98, though.

You can also try to change the permissions. right-click on each directory, then properties and then unclick the appropriate markings.


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## mark069 (Oct 25, 2008)

The problem here is that Windows 98 does not actually have file permissions so I think it just sees this file with XP permissions and doesn't have any ability to read or modify those permissions. 

But when Windows 98 trys to "ignore" those permissions and just read the file it cannot find the content - presumably because the permission security has "hidden" the "link" to the actual file content.

So my new idea is to run scan disk on this hard disk under windows 98 - I'm hoping scan disk will "relink" the content to the file name and just ignore the permissions - it's been running for 8 hours now so I'll see what it did in a few hours.

My last resort will be to look into a program that reads hard drive content by sectors rather than file structure. After that I am going to just have to say goodbye to all the data on this hard drive. The stuff I really wanted from this drive was about 10 GB of personal pictures. I backed up some of these pictures and might even have most of it backed up on CD's but I know there's current stuff that I had not yet backed up.....


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## ZeRealBigBoss (Mar 17, 2007)

Don't throw it away yet; there might be another solution.

First of all, be careful with the results of scandisk. Many times it reports lost sectors and deletes them, although they are actual parts of existing files and should not be erased.

Try this: run a file recovery program on the whole disk. I have excellent experiences with PC Inspector, it runs under W98 and it is free.

http://www.download.com/PC-Inspector-File-Recovery/3000-2248_4-10118664.html or:
http://www.brothersoft.com/file-recovery-download-86397.html

Read:
http://www.winplanet.com/article/3172-.htm

Just select everything on the old disk and recover that to the new one. As the recoverer reads FATs and sectors directly, it does not care about permissions and there is a very good chance that the files will be copied. If the existing files do not show up on the recovery screen, delete them first (but try this with a few before!). Deleted files are never physically wiped off immediately, but the first letter of their name in the directory is changed to a "?" and that is what a recoverer looks for. As the freed sectors are written over by and by by new entries, do not write on a disk that contains deleted files that must be recovered.

As long as scandisk has not curtailed the files, there is an other way to get them back. File access is restricted by the operating system, in this case Windows and its underlaying version of DOS. If you now boot the computer on purely minimal DOS from a floppy, it is very likely that the access restriction is circumvented and you can copy the files over straight away with the trusty copy *.* command.


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## ZeRealBigBoss (Mar 17, 2007)

Here is the link to the producer of this recoverer:

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1


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## mark069 (Oct 25, 2008)

Well, after scan disk was run on the hard disk under Windows 98 I no longer got "access denied" errors so I was able to copy the data off that hard disk!

I am sure your method with PC Inspector would have worked also so I 'll keep that program in mind for future hard disk problems.


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