Yesterday this was posted as a comment by a reader named Jenny in which she stated:

I transferred my files from my old computer that died using a powered enclosure easily and successfully. However, it denies me access to my children’s files (even if they try from their accounts with the same passwords). One of them has a lot of school stuff she wants and the other wants her itunes library. Worse, my husbands work files are nowhere to be found. Old computer is windows XP, new is Vista. We learned our lesson about backing up files. Any suggestions?

I recalled some others having this problem and remembered a posting in one of the forums by fellow MVP Rick Rogers which is located here with this suggestion:

It’s one of two things:

1) If it’s a Vista system that you are getting the files from, then you are
accessing the wrong folders. Vista does not use “My…” except as a
placeholder. The files would be under the user profile as simply Documents,
Downloads, Music, etc.

2) If it’s from an XP/2000 installation, then you need to take ownership of
the folders before you can access them. Right click the folder and select
properties. Go to the Security tab and click advanced. Move to the Owner tab
and click edit. Locate and select your user account, then enable the box to
propagate to all subfolders and containers. Click apply and let it run.
Close the security dialogs and retry accessing the folder.

If anyone else has any suggestions please share them as well. I’m fairly sure Jenny can’t be the only person who had run into this problem. Suggestions and comments are welcome.

[tags]windows, xp, vista, microsoft, files, not accessible, file transfer, open, view, properties, folder, names, help,   [/tags]