My JPEG files won't open they are saying Access Denied instead can anyone help?

Question

I've a load of pictures (JPEGS) on a hard drive that was taken from a laptop running windows XP professional SP1. When I try to view them on my New Laptop running Windows XP Home edition SP2 they don't preview. If I try to copy them from the hard drive to my laptop I get an Access Denied error. Everything else including video files MP4's works fine.

Answer 1

I think that your files were on an NTFS drive on your old laptop, you have now to take "ownership" of those files to be able to view them. please follow those steps and see if it would work.
- Open (double click) My Computer icon.
- From the menu, goto Tools ->Folder Options..
- From the "View" tab, scroll down to the very end of the list, UN-check (clear) the "Use simple file sharing (Recommended)"
- Click OK
- Browse to the folder that you have your pictures stored in, click "Ctrl+A" (select all) (just select all the image files)
- Right mouse click, from the popup menu select "Properties"
- Goto "Security" tab, click on the Advanced button, you'll be presented with "Advanced Security Settings..."
- Goto the "Owner" tab, you most likely would see the owner as something with letters and numbers.
- From the Change Owner to: select the Administrators (computer name\Administrators)
- Click OK and accept any warning messages that you may encounter
Once you do those steps you should be able to view your JPEG files.

After you done all this turn the simple file sharing option back to what you had if you liked.

HTH