Hard Drive - Access Denied (Win 7)

Retromatic · 3 Jan 2012 at 11:56

Hi, I'm in need of quite urgent help. I've got 3 HD's in my pc, one of them I use for storage has decided to lock out access to me.

This happened after chkdsk decided to run randomly 2 days ago and said "Replacing invalid security id with default security id file". I didn't think too much of it until I tried to acces the drive today and got "E:\ is not accessable - Access Denied).

I've tried a few things from googling around but nothing seems to correct it, I went into Diskmanager and it says "healthy, active, primary partition" - so I guess the HD is okay, I've had HD's fail before and this doesn't seem the same either.

My account has a password but has full control in permissions, so I'm a little confused.

Can anyone save the day?

marc2003 · 3 Jan 2012 at 12:00

try and take ownership first and then set the permissions again.

(right click>properties>security>advanced>owner>edit)

Retromatic · 3 Jan 2012 at 12:32

Thanks for the reply, when I go into what you suggested - I have two options to change the owner to :

Administrators (mypcname\PC) Administrator
or
(mypcname)/PC

I've tried changing to both and both do nothing. And the permissions for administrator are still full. Also why is it displaying two options, I only have one account which is admin, no guest accounts or anything?

Retromatic · 3 Jan 2012 at 16:37

Any other suggestions? Still stuck on this.

Something else to note is that when I click on the "Owner" tab, following the above instructions, current owner says "Unable to display current owner" but when I hit edit, the same box says "Administrators (mypcname)\Administrators) as the current owner.

Hopefully this is making sense to someone

ns400r · 3 Jan 2012 at 17:52

Remove the current 'owner' and apply. Then add a new owner.

Retromatic · 4 Jan 2012 at 19:23

ns400r said:
Remove the current 'owner' and apply. Then add a new owner.

I've had a look and googled and I'm unable to find any way of doing this.

Under the owner tab, there is no option to remove anything.

marc2003 · 4 Jan 2012 at 19:34

just pick your own user account and make sure you tick the box "replace owner on subcontainers and objects".

Retromatic · 4 Jan 2012 at 19:51

marc2003 said:
just pick your own user account and make sure you tick the box "replace owner on subcontainers and objects".

That's exactly what I've been doing. It cycles through the files which are on the hard drive and actually says changing ownership to me but still the same - no access.

What about if I look into disabling UAC? Or are the two unrelated?

marc2003 · 4 Jan 2012 at 19:59

after taking ownership, close all dialogs. then right click>properties>security and make sure your user account and SYSTEM have full permissions.

UAC is totally un-related.

Retromatic · 4 Jan 2012 at 21:45

marc2003 said:
after taking ownership, close all dialogs. then right click>properties>security and make sure your user account and SYSTEM have full permissions.

UAC is totally un-related.

Thanks for your continued help.

I have no SYSTEM account showing up under that, literally just my admin user account.

Edit - I'm guessing this is the problem as I SYSTEM shows up under my C:\ and D:\ drive as well as other names (Authenticated User etc)?

marc2003 · 4 Jan 2012 at 21:48

click "change permissions" then "add" and type it in. make sure it's set with full control and it applies to subfolders/files. click ok and make sure you tick the box "replace all child permissions with inheritable permissions from this object".

Retromatic · 5 Jan 2012 at 09:07

Okay, I did that (System didn't have full control) but when I ticked the box "replace all child permissions with inheritable permissions from this object to SYSTEM I get an access denied message. I tried the same with my user account and it cycled through the hard drive contents "replacing child permissions" but still no access.

So just to re-cap both my user account and SYSTEM have full permissions with ownership and all folders and sub files ticked. My user account is set to owner (although under owner it still says "unable to display owner" until I go into the Edit button, whereby it then says my user account is the owner.

ChrisD. · 5 Jan 2012 at 09:11

Is your user account an administrator account?

Deception · 5 Jan 2012 at 09:38

Try creating a new user and see if that one can get access. Also, if its unable to display owner until you edit, then you might want to try and retake ownership. It sometimes displays that if you dont actually have full ownership.

Retromatic · 5 Jan 2012 at 14:23

MilanoChris said:
Is your user account an administrator account?

Yup, it's the only account.

Retromatic · 5 Jan 2012 at 14:25

Deception said:
Try creating a new user and see if that one can get access. Also, if its unable to display owner until you edit, then you might want to try and retake ownership. It sometimes displays that if you dont actually have full ownership.

I've tried that, still exactly the same. I've also tried retaking ownership several times and every time it says I have ownership. When I edit the ownership it lists me as the full owner, just not when you first go onto the screen. (says the unable to display owner thing).

Deception · 5 Jan 2012 at 15:43

What other users are in the user list under security?

Retromatic · 5 Jan 2012 at 18:19

Deception said:
What other users are in the user list under security?

Now, there is System and Me but I had to add System in (see above in the thread).

I can't remember if this is normal and might be worth mentioning but when I go into security it asks me "to continue you must be an administrator blah blah blah" and works fine when I continue.

I guess I'm running out of options here now. I'm totally confused as to how/why this has happened anyway, never had any problems with permissions etc in Windows 7 - seems so random.

HazardO · 5 Jan 2012 at 20:28

Having just finally managed to remove my old windows directory from dirve d: (was vista) while in win7, I can point you to a blunt tool which will give you ownership and full permissions for a folder (and I assume a drive if required).

Taken from :
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930527/en-us

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WARNING: This will give all permissions to administrator, and you may still need permissions for other users (e.g.: SYSTEM and TrusedInstaller) for your backup/antivirus etc. to be able to use the drive..
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as administrator.
In the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
At the command prompt, type takeown /F <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\* /R /A, and then press ENTER.

Note When you run this command, you are granted ownership of the administrator group for the folder, of all the subdirectories in the folder, and of all the files in the folder.

At the command prompt, type cacls <DriveLetter>:\<FolderName>\*.* /T /grant administrators:F, and then press ENTER.

Note When you run this command, administrators are granted full rights to all files and to all folders.

Retromatic · 5 Jan 2012 at 20:52

Hi, thanks - I have already tried that, I didn't mention in the thread but I had tried a few things googling around when I first encountered the problem.

It seemed to work but access is still denied at the end, I'm not on that pc at the moment but I will definately give it another go in case the one I read was slightly different etc.