Basically once your computer detects your iPod as a hard drive, click on Start, and then Accessories, then “Windows Explorer” (it may be in a different location, this is just where its at on my laptop, which runs XP Home SP2)

At this point, you can try clicking on the drive and see if it will pull up. It worked a few times for me and then it gave me access denied there as well, so I had to find ANOTHER way to do it.

The other way is: In Windows Explorer (or on your desktop), right click the “My Computer” icon and click “Manage.” Then, click on “Disk Management”, which is towards the bottom of the list on the lefthand side. The right hand window will show you a list of which drives are currently on your computer, which should include your iPod. Right click the iPod drive and click “Explore,” and it should pull up your iPods contents and let you access everything.

Hopefully that works out for you.. unfortunately I don’t know how else to troubleshoot the iPod and access its contents. The only thing Apple told me to do was access another computer (which ended up giving me the same problems) or reformat the iPod.

Once you back everything up, just wipe the iPod clean and start off fresh again - it should work fine, it solved my problem and it hasn’t exhibited it since.

Hope that helps!!

I have to same problem now. I also have important stuff in my hard drive and that fricking ‘Access is Denied’ is annoying. DX

But may I ask, how were you able to get the stuff in your ipod hard drive back? Or how did you back them up?