Access Denied to Drive

[enerxia]

Hi out there, I accidentally pressed a button which has caused me a big headache. Big big help needed!

My pc runs on Windows NT 2000 and I have 2 physical drives with 3 partitions on 1 (C,D,E) and 2 on the other (F,G). Under the 'My Computer' window, I highlighted the 5 drives and right clicked to get the 'Properties' window thinking to check combined memory available. When the 'Properties' window popped up, I got 6 seperate tabs for the 5 different drives and 1 tab for security. Curiously I clicked on 'Security' to check it out. A window popped up asking if I wanted to reset the relation (can't exactly recall) for drive G: and other drives. I accidentally clicked yes. I had to wait awhile then when I checked again, I could no longer access the other drives.

Except G:, each displayed OGB of memory and displayed the message (I can't remember) either 'access denied' or 'drive not found' when I tried to click on it. Upon rebooting, the 'Limited Virtual Memory' error message popped up asking me to make the paging file bigger and all the links to all my desktop icons would not open. The message was 'source of xxx.lnk could not be found. Please check that the drive or network cable is plugged in properly or source is valid' (again this is what I recall and may not be accurate to the tee).

Now I can't access any of the files or programs in the four drives except G: ! What should i do??

[DragonNOA1]

I tried what you said and it came up with a message to reset the security b/c all the drives had different security configurations. Looks like you probably disabled some permissions for yourself and the computer, hence why you can't access the drives and the computer can't either, resulting in limited VM size.

Are you able to get back to the security tab of all your disk drives? If so look at another computer and set them all back to their defaults. Usually there are approx. 4 groups; Administrators, Creator Owner, System, Users. They each have different permissions and it'd be easier to just check what they are from another computer.

[enerxia]

If I'm not mistaken I did this while in a user setting. But after logging into admin setting, still couldn't access the drives except G:

By the way, how do I check from another computer?

[glc]

Try this. Log in as administrator. Right click on each drive in My Computer, select Properties. Go to the Security tab, Advanced. Go to the Owner tab - who is the current owner and what choices do you have for changing ownership?

[RayH]

If you have a copy of Partition Magic, change the partitons to FAT 32. It'll knock out all the Windows security stuff. I discovered that when I put Windows security on my drives.

[glc]

I would be VERY careful converting back to FAT32 from NTFS with Partition Magic - the success rate is around 50%.