accessing your Vista files from Windows 7

One of the first things you'll want to do after installation is access your documents, music tracks, videos and pictures, which are by default inside the /users/[your username here] folder over on the Vista partition.

Now if you've never fiddled with the sharing or security settings of your personal folders in Vista, this is a simple matter. In windows 7 you click on 'My Computer' and navigate to /users/[your username here] on the Vista drive and double click. A dialogue box appears, you click the 'yes' (or 'OK' or 'proceed' or words to that effect) button. And hey presto, you're in. You can also save files to any of the folders inside /users/[your username here] on the Vista drive.

But if you have fiddled, and believe me - that's not an uncommon scenario, you may encounter some obstacles in Windows 7. And if you try to override the Vista security settings on those folders from within windows 7, you may and end up digging a deeper and deeper hole and eventually find yourself unable to access your files in either operating system.

My firm advice - if you encounter obstacles in windows 7, go back to Vista and set up a test user account. Log in, which will automatically create document, video, music and pictures folders for the test user. Right click on any of these folders and examine the security settings. Write down who is listed as a user and the permissions set for each of these users. Then log into your own account and apply these same security settings to each of your personal folders. (Note - I don't think the sharing status of the folders matters at all since sharing applies to network users, not users on a different drive of the same PC.) In my case, I had to add both 'SYSTEM' and 'Administrators' to the user list, alongside [my username], and assign 'full control' to each.