Shanti Khumukcham

Folder “Access is Denied” in Win XP and the remedy!

I had done a routine backup from one of the networked Computers to my External Hard drive some time back. Everything was fine then. But while mounting the hard drive to a standalone computer and clicking on the folders I got an error message “Access is denied”.

Microsoft says that this issue occurs when My Administrator’s security ID does not match the security ID of the owner of the folder that we cannot open.

To resolve this issue, we must turn off Simple File Sharing, and then take ownership of the folder.

Turn off Simple File Sharing:

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab.
3. Under Advanced Settings, click to clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) check box, and then click OK.

Take ownership of the folder:

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message, if one appears.
3. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
4. In the Name list, click your user name, Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group.
5. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, click to select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
6. Click OK. You may receive the following error message, where Folder is the name of the folder that you want to take ownership of:
   

   You do not have permission to read the contents of directory Folder. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes.

7. Click Yes.
8. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and the folder contents.