I am having a seriously annoying problem with XP, which despite formatting my hard drive and re-installing XP, still persists. All my music is my second partition, but since this morning whenever I try to access the folder containing my music I get the error folder_name is not accessible access denied Does anyone know how I can access to my music again - if something has gone corrupt can anyone suggest any data retreival tools (pref freeware). Thanks in advance

are you running ntfs or fat32? I would be willing to bet that you are using ntfs based on your posting about the error message you get. One thing you could try, is to boot using a win98 disk. If you do have ntfs for your file system, you should stop over at NTFS.Com and get yourself a copy of the freeware utility to view, copy, modify, etc... files located on an ntfs partition. From there, copy them to another folder, partition, or even drive. If by some chance you ARE running fat32 for your file system, then I would try to boot with a 98 boot disk, and try to copy the files to a new location... you might want to get a copy of DosLFN so you keep your long file names. That's what I'd try first, post back if it helps.

Have you tried to login as the Admin to gain access??.

my suggestion is: right click on the folder that your music is in, and click "properties"; then "Security" tab it should be next to sharing tab; then click "Advanced" its at the bottom. then click "Owner" tab. im guessing that it doesnt show you as the current owner. so below that cick on your username, and below that check the "Replace owner...objects" once your the owner then youll be allowed in. if no security tab then click "tools"; "folder options"; "view"; and uncheck "simple file sharing"

You could try running scandisk (or whatever it is called in XP -"check drive for errors" I think) It may be a problem with the file allocation table and this may fix it.