I have an old SATA HDD out of a Dell laptop that wont boot up windows anymore because of a missing file (hal.dll) or something like that. I have it hooked into my new tower and i have done every fix i could find online about it but none seem to work. I can see the drive in my computer, I have set the ownership to my new computer and all the privelidges and everything. It is still giving me the access denied message when i try and open the drive. In my computer it does not show the capacity of the HDD which could be a problem, but it does show 3 different partitions in the disk management screen but only lets me do anything with one of them. There is a 39 MB partition and a 4.7 GB partition that i cannot do anything with. I just want to get all my old pictures and music off of my old HDD PLEASE help!!!!
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Jump to PostDid you try and take ownership with Explorer running as Administrator?
Would you consider using Disk/File unlocking software?
Can you get to the C drive, put the missing system file back, reboot on the original laptop and get the files off in a different way?
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Jump to PostI think we need more specific information given that you're in front of the problem and we've got to interpret what you report.
Any chance of your providing screen shots of the Disk Management Screen for the external drive?
Jump to PostI suggest that in Disk Management you right click on the (B:) partition and change the drive letter from B to E.
Something's not right having a hard drive a B:.
Let us know.
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