My computer crashed a few months ago when it caught the "Windows XP Pro" virus. I took it to a professional to be repaired. He fixed it by creating another hard disk and created an icon for the old hard disk with all of my original programs, documents and folders. Now I can't open a lot of Word docs and a lot of folders. I get "access denied". I took it back to the repair shop and they "unlocked" them. I was able to access about half of the documents etc., but there are still folders within folders that still give me the "access denied". I informed the repairman about this and he said that he unlocked all that he could and that the rest of the stuff is just corrupted. I feel that he just didn't want to deal with it anymore since he already took my $$. Is there a way to unock these folders and documents? I have a lot of research papers and reports for nursing school that are very valuable to me. Can anyone help??? Thanks!!!! Athena :) P.S. I do have an external drive now. I have backed up everything, even the folders and documents that give me the "access denied" message.

Here's an article on taking ownership of files and folders, see if that works for you: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421 I can symphathize with you, some repair places can't be bothered after getting your $'s I just fixed a PC that the Geek Squad had supposedly fixed at the rate of $135 for a one hour housecall and the PC was still messed up. Took me 3 hours and I just charged the client a minimal fee for the fix-up. Some HELP in posting on Computing.net plus free progs and instructions Cheers

XpUser4Real!!!! Many THANKS!!!!!!! I was able to take ownership of all my research papers and school reports!!!! I still have a lot more to unlock and it's very tedious, but worth every minute I have to spend doing it! I guess I can understand why the computer repairman didn't want to do it, but he lied to me and said it wasn't possible to access the files. I'm going to leave him a "nice" message on his machine! haha. Believe me that I'm backing EVERYTHING up to my external drive to prevent this from happening again! Thank you for taking the time to help!!!!! Cheers! Athena :)

You are very welcome! Thanks for posting back. Some HELP in posting on Computing.net plus free progs and instructions Cheers