Thread: Can't open files

I have an Intel Core 2 Duo powered PC with 1 GB of memory and 160-GB hard drive running on Windows XP. The hard drive has four partitions- three of them are 40 GB each and the last one is 29 GB. There is a folder containing about 30 GB of data in the E drive. All files in this folder are shown properly and even Windows XP recognises them. The folder has AVI, MKV and MP3 files. When I double-click on any of these files, they don't open. I tried using VLC, but it wouldn't open them either. Sometimes, I get a message saying Access is denied. I don't want to lose the data so I don't want to format the partition.

The problem you are facing could be due to permissions for that drive or partition. If you were previously running a different operating system, the rights and permissions for a partition might still be present. You need to authenticate using the same user name and password to access the folder. Create a new user through the Control Panel with the previously used credentials and try accessing the drive. You can also change the permissions by right-clicking on a particularly drive or folder and clicking on the Security tab.