My older hp nx9010 laptop froze a while back (stopped booting @ the blue screen & windows logo)

I couldn't re-load windows as the combo drive is fecked (& I will pick up a 2nd hand drive when I can - but I'm not pushed).

So I just left it there - not really concerned & don't need it anymore.

So this Sunday afternoon - with some time to spare I removed the harddisk and plugged it (via usb) into a laptop running windows 7 and I was prompted that I don't have authority to access the documents folders.

I then plugged it in (via usb) to a desktop running xp and was able to access all folders.

Not sure what that was all about & would be interested if anyone could comment.

PaddyBKK

Duplicate post. Mods please remove.

Windows 7 has additional security over Windows XP. You need to take ownership to access.

Search Google about taking ownership of drives and folders. On my Windows 7 system it's shirt>right click>Take Ownership. On some systems you have to right click>Properties>Security tab>Advanced>Owner tab.

Once you have ownership you can change the security policy for the drive or folder.

Another way to access the disk would be to use another operating system, like Linux. In your case XP worked because the Win7 security was not backwards-compatible. Handy to keep an Ubuntu live-cd around for these things.

The only way to ensure that the data would be unaccessible would have been if the files were encrypted.

thanks BB1950 & bendejo

I'll keep that in mind for future reference

I thought at first that HP had some way tried to prevent access.

Anyway, while I had it out I did a virus scan (with Trend) & no bugs were found.

I re-installed the hdd to the laptop & it behaved as before (hangs at blue screen & logo)

Maybe next Sunday I'll try playing with the DIMMs on the off-chance that one of the 2 is the cause of it hanging up.

PaddyBKK

bendejo gave good advice with a Linux livecd allowing the file/directory permissions Windows has set to be bypassed.

Personally I use a awesome utility called SARDU to build a multi software recovery USB which hangs off my mobile.....