Hey everyone, I hope this is the right area to post this.
I recently just upgraded to a new computer that's running Windows 8.1 and had all my media files (mostly photos and text documents) from the old XP computer saved on an external hard drive. I plug the external HD to my new computer and can access the drive itself, but I can't view nearly 90% of the content! :( Videos and music files seem to work fine, but none of the photos or document/text files will open, which are the most important to me.
The document files say "access is denied" and can't be opened and when I try to view the photos it says "Windows photo viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permission to access the file location". Even when I try to move or copy&paste the files out of the external HD, it denies me.
How can I fix this problem? How do I get permission to my own files? I tried to "take ownership" of the drive...but I'm not so confident that I'm doing it right because I haven't been able to find any instructions on doing it with Windows 8.1 ... and what I'm doing still hasn't helped.
ANY help or suggestions that anyone can give me on how to get permission to view all my photos/documents again on my new computer would be awesome. I'm a photographer so I'm pretty horrified at the idea of not being able to access my photos. :confused: The drive itself works fine and all the files were accessible on the older computer...so why can't I access them on the new computer? Isn't that what saving to external HD's is good for? So you don't lose all your important files...
Please help!
** Update: I have also just tried the TakeOwnership registry hack, and it hasn't fixed the problem either. Still getting the "Windows photo viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permission to access the file location" whenever I try to open a photo from the drive, even after "taking ownership" using the reg hack. I did not try the hack on the entire drive, just the individual photos that won't work. **
I recently just upgraded to a new computer that's running Windows 8.1 and had all my media files (mostly photos and text documents) from the old XP computer saved on an external hard drive. I plug the external HD to my new computer and can access the drive itself, but I can't view nearly 90% of the content! :( Videos and music files seem to work fine, but none of the photos or document/text files will open, which are the most important to me.
The document files say "access is denied" and can't be opened and when I try to view the photos it says "Windows photo viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permission to access the file location". Even when I try to move or copy&paste the files out of the external HD, it denies me.
How can I fix this problem? How do I get permission to my own files? I tried to "take ownership" of the drive...but I'm not so confident that I'm doing it right because I haven't been able to find any instructions on doing it with Windows 8.1 ... and what I'm doing still hasn't helped.
ANY help or suggestions that anyone can give me on how to get permission to view all my photos/documents again on my new computer would be awesome. I'm a photographer so I'm pretty horrified at the idea of not being able to access my photos. :confused: The drive itself works fine and all the files were accessible on the older computer...so why can't I access them on the new computer? Isn't that what saving to external HD's is good for? So you don't lose all your important files...
Please help!
** Update: I have also just tried the TakeOwnership registry hack, and it hasn't fixed the problem either. Still getting the "Windows photo viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permission to access the file location" whenever I try to open a photo from the drive, even after "taking ownership" using the reg hack. I did not try the hack on the entire drive, just the individual photos that won't work. **
