Good Day all, I recently swapped machines and i had an external hard drive setup with a folder that was not shared with NTFS permissions. Now on my new machine i cannot access that folder. I receive the message "access is denied". I have tried adding my account (which is an administrator account) to the permission but that still does not work. Any ideas ? Thank you and have a great day.

You need to take ownership of the drive. How to take ownership of a file or folder in Windows XP. Here are the steps in quickie mode 1. Log on to the computer with an account that has administrative credentials. If you are running Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, you must start the computer in safe mode, and then log on with an account that has Administrative rights to have access to the Security tab. 2. If you are using Windows XP Professional, you must disable Simple File Sharing. 3. Right-click the folder/file that you want to take ownership of, and then click Properties. 4. Click the Security tab, and then click OK on the Security message (if one appears). 5. Click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab. 6. In the Name list, click your user name, or click Administrator if you are logged in as Administrator, or click the Administrators group. If you want to take ownership of the contents of that folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box. 7. Click OK, and then click Yes when you receive the following message: You do not have permission to read the contents of directory folderName. Do you want to replace the directory permissions with permissions granting you Full Control? All permissions will be replaced if you press Yes. 8. Click OK, and then reapply the permissions and security settings that you want for the folder and its contents

Thank you soo much. It works. I greatly appreciate your help and the quickness of your response.

Your welcome, thanks for getting back.