Yup, another computer question...

[Scott Douglas]

Last night I got my son's old laptop out and got it going. Battery showed 1% so I hooked up the charger and was running off A/C for a while. Shut it down when I went to bed but left the charger on all night figuring it'd charge up while I slept. Get up this morning and the laptop won't even turn on now.

So, rather than fight a dead battery and/or charger I took out the hard drive and now have it hooked up to my desktop via the USB port.

My problem is most of the files are protected. I can see thumbnails of some of the pictures but other files I can't even access.

What do I have to change in order to gain access?

The laptop was running Win XP if I remember correctly.

The files I can access are in a folder I created called Data. The ones I can't access are found under the usual Win file explorer tree Documents or user data.

[Scott R]

Without seeing what the "locked" files look like, you most likely need to take permission of the folders on the drive.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753659.aspx

You can also do this via the command line with SubInacl, which sometimes works better and more quickly.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23510

[Scott Douglas]

Thanks Scott, I'll take a look at those links.

First I have to go to the in-law's and see about a garbage disposal replacement. ugh.

[968rz]

Using a Linux box can often bypass that lock