Denied external drive permission after factory reset

I have been setting the whole drive(s).

Very strange. I have never seen that behavior before. I assume if you do the attrib /s /d -h -s * command in command prompt the folders come back?

What if you add to Securtiy SYSTEM and deny full access. Does that prevent it from hiding your folders?

Hmmm! I haven't tried that, but I will..

What were the results of trying that? Or did you find a different solution?

I'm curious, too...I am experiencing something similar. I recently did a reimage and keep my files on an external hard drive (music, photos, etc.). All my apps/programs are installed on C:/OS-drive. Went to use my media player and am getting all kinds of "can't find file" or "access is denied" when trying to open them in the media player or view them in Windows Image Viewer. I've set ownership to administrator on the external drive, but am also getting padlocks on some of the directories and the same errors accessing them.

So, I played with this a little more...I only had a few affected directories and on those, I tweaked the permissions further: Security > Advanced > Change Permissions > select Administrators > click Edit > selected the Apply these permissions to objects and/or containers within this container only option > click OK > selected include inheritable permissions from this object's parent > selected replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object > click OK > click OK to close out of the other dialog boxes and seem to be back in business! Good luck!

Your problem was a permissions issue. The OP had a virus/malware cause, so slightly different. Glad you were able to get the permissions/ownership resolved. :)

Hopefully this isn't bumping an old thread, applogies for the extremely delayed reply haven't had the luxury of time to get back to addressing this problem.

Having had some other unrelated issues (probably caused by what was stated in Denied external drive permission after factory reset did another factory reset so as far as the external drives goes I'm back to square one. Haven't altered any of the settings with regard to it yet.

Should I follow the commands in Denied external drive permission after factory reset but replace C with the current drive E where the external is registered as?

Yes, use that command with G: instead of C:. Make very sure you do not use C:

Tried it but replacing C: with E: since that's now the drive it's on, although it said access denied.