I have taken ownership of all the files and folders on an old hard drive, but am still unable to access many of these files. When checking in the Security tab, I see myself as the owner with full admin permissions, but still cannot open the files.
Anyone know how to resolve this issue?
Welcome to sevenforums jg,
Since I suspect that your real objective is to be able delete, move, copy the files, then you might want to consider adding "everyone" to the list of Group or User Names, then giving Everyone Full control, then - here comes the kicker - and the step that you might want to check on from you previous takeownership,etc efforts.
Close the Security tab. Reopen the Security tab. Click on Everyone.
click on Advanced. Click on "Change Permissions" (whoa, you say-I've already done that-you are in for a surprise). Click on "Replace all child object permissions with inheritable permissions from this object".
Apply buttons all of the way out.
Considering the scenerio where these files are encrypted in old system
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May be file encryption is enabled in the old computer with a certain username for some of the folders and these files you are not able to access now.
Once you move the hard disk from one system to another system after encryption, it is physically impossible to access these files.
Even if you create the same username as old username, the username security tokens are different and the encrypted file system will not decrypt these files.
If this is the case, the files are as good as gone....
Only way to salvage these files is to install the old hard disk in the original system with the same operating system and same original username (which encrypted these files) still existing. Once you access these files in the old computer, you need to disable the file encryption for these files.
Once this is done the hard disk may be shifted to the new system and you will have full access to these files....
Does 7 encrypt by default? so my i ask. WHY IN HOLY HELL DOES IT DO THIS? i have this same problem, old computer goes bunk and im trying to recover lost game files and projects. Must 7 get so complicated for such trivial crap?
No Windows 7 does not encrypt anything without being told to do so. Even if it did, it would be able to decrypt because it would hold the encryption key. No, the previous OS is what encrypted your files at your request, the previous OS held the encryption key, if you did not back up that encryption key AFTER you encrypted your files then those files are lost.
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