USB drive "Access Denied"

[Guest]

I'm going directly from win2K to Vista, and Vista is having problems with my
USB external hard drive. It is listed under "unspecified" drives in My
Computer, properties shows it having 0 bytes, and any attempt to open or
explore it produces the message:

F:\ is not accessible.

Access is denied.

My investigation so far has led me to believe this has something to do with
permissions, but tinkering with them thus far has yielded no results. Most
of the time, trying to safely remove the device produces the following
message:

Windows can't stop your 'Generic volume' device because a program is still
using it. Close any programs that might be using the device, and try again
later.

I've run every diagnostic I have in Win2K, where the drive reads without
problems, so I'm fairly confident the drive itself is not the issue.

 

[Guest]

Hello
I have Vista business on my computer and when I hook up the WD external hard
drive, I receive the same message. I have not yet tried to enter BIOS as
suggested by earlier message and wanted to see if others had the smiliar
message I received. Have you managed to rectify the problem yet? I have all
of our offices files and e-mails in the external drive and need a solution to
the problem. Any suggestions?

Chief

 

[Thomas]

The problem is probably the permissions: a user account that exists on one
OS won't be known by the other OS, unless it's a domain user and both OSes
are joined to the domain.

If this is the problem, use the OS that can access the drive to grant access
to the entire drive tree to the Administrators group. If you then run as a
member of Administrators, with elevated privileges, on the other OS, you
should be able to access the drive, and thereby grant access to your normal
account. However, be careful not to remove access for any unknown accounts,
which will be the accounts known by the other OS.

Thomas

 

[Morten Solemsli Lauritzen]

Hi!

Do you have an Acer system by any chance? If so, the eLock application might
have made your life unhappy! It certainly did to my laptop! I hadn't used
it, but it had still locked all my removable drives/usb.

Go to this address and download the eLock program if you don't already have
it.
http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/

Then run it, set a password, lock all your drives, and unlock them. That
solved my problem!



Morten