Vista locked my old XP files...HELP !!

Hi All,

I recently bought a new notebook with vista business pre-installed. I
managed to put xp dual booting with vista on it after a lot of effort. My
problem is, prior to having xp installed, I browsed some files on an external
hard disk, and when I return to xp, I no longer have access to those
folder/files, since vista had earlier taken ownership of them. I know I can
go back to vista, and go through each file and grant access rights one at a
time...but this will take forever going through thousands of files. To
further complicate the issue, vista only has ownership of the root folder,
and a small number of files within it, so if I tried sharing the entire
folder I still cannot access all the files. Is there a way I can take
ownership of files under vista in bulk, then release access rights? or can I
somehow just cancel vista ownership entirely?
many thanks in advance!!

Hi,

Cancel? No, but from XP you can repeat the procedure (it's basically the
same) to give yourself access to them by taking ownership of the root folder
and enabling the box that allows the change to propagate to all subfolders
and containers. Then alter permissions to allow the Vista install to access
them as well.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

"pondfish" <> wrote in message
news:AF91778B-F18D-4953-83B6-...
> Hi All,
>
> I recently bought a new notebook with vista business pre-installed. I
> managed to put xp dual booting with vista on it after a lot of effort. My
> problem is, prior to having xp installed, I browsed some files on an
> external
> hard disk, and when I return to xp, I no longer have access to those
> folder/files, since vista had earlier taken ownership of them. I know I
> can
> go back to vista, and go through each file and grant access rights one at
> a
> time...but this will take forever going through thousands of files. To
> further complicate the issue, vista only has ownership of the root folder,
> and a small number of files within it, so if I tried sharing the entire
> folder I still cannot access all the files. Is there a way I can take
> ownership of files under vista in bulk, then release access rights? or can
> I
> somehow just cancel vista ownership entirely?
> many thanks in advance!!