AVI FILES NOT ACCESSIBLE

[jameslpc]

For some strange reasons all the avi files that I saved (8 months ago) in one particular data hard-disk "F" could no longer be accessed. Error message says file could not be open its either in use or protected, or disk is full etc. None of which is true as far as I can see. There are no other programs running. Similar message when trying to virus scan these files, the file cannot be accessed.
There are no problems accessing the avi video files on the other 3 hard disks ; System Disk "C", and disk "D" and "E".

I'm desperate to recover these raw video footages as the original tapes are no longer available. Grateful for any help I can get.

[sacajaweeda]

Can you copy it to another drive or partition, or will it not let you access it at all? Perhaps your drive is failing?

[jameslpc]

These avi files could not be copied as they are not accessible. However I could copy avi file from a different drive to this 'F' drive and it then could be accessed and played wihtout any problem, this seem to indicate the hard-drive is still healthy.

[autodidact]

You could boot into Safe Mode with Command Prompt (you're using WindowsXP I assume) and try copying or moving the files to a different drive from the command line. I've read that deleting the following registry entry may also solve the problem after a reboot:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{87D62D9 4-71B3-4b9a-9489-5FE6850DC73E}\InProcServer32.
That registry entry has to do with Windows reading media properties of the file thereby keeping the file in use by the operating system.