My hard drive is write-protected....???

[costa_D_27]

First off, I'm not very computer literate, but I can make my way around the computer.  I thought I knew a thing or two about computers until this most recent problem.  I opened iTunes in the morning and listend to some music, turned off my computer and went to work, came back that night, started up my computer again and tried to open iTunes.  That's when a small yellow exclamation/error window popped up and said the folder "iTunes" is on a locked or write-protected disk.  ....  I have iTunes and my music stored on an external Hitachi 80 gig hard drive.  I thought the problem might only be on that drive, but when I tried to download pictures into my "mypictures" folder, it also said that this drive is write protected...this is on my internal hard drive!........I have absolutely no idea what is going on....this is really annoying, and I'm in China so I can't easily take it to a computer repair center....Please help if you can.  

I have a HP Pavilion zd8000 with a 3 gig processor, 2 gigs of RAM, and an 80 gig internal hard drive (that is divided into three drives: C,D and E ["my pictures is located on the E drive]).  Like I said before, I have an 80 gig Hitachi external hard drive.  Please let me know if you can help with this problem.

Further information: I forgot to bring my Windows Recovery Disk (I have windows XP) with me when I came to China, but I will be going home to America for a trip soon and should be able to pick that up.  Also, my computer is really messed up in the fact that when I start it up, I am forced to press the ESC key at the windows loading (black with windows logo on it) and then when it goes through some tests it says something like, some scan function detects immenant failure on the internal hard drive, press F1 to continue.  I press F1 and then my computer boots up.  If I don't go through this process, after the black w/ window's logo screen the screen goes entirely black and doesn't progress past there, although I can still hear the system is running....just unable to progress any further.  

Yes, major problems...please let me know if you can help.  

Thanks,
        Peter

[GX1_Man]

It's time to run the free diagnostics from the appropriate hard drive maker's site. It sounds like a S.M.A.R.T. failure notice and that is not a good sign.

You might try a Linux Live CD to see if the machine is functional enough to back up your important data.

http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?num=1152393515

If the hard drive is bad, replacement is the only appropriate course of action.

[2k_dummy]

From a command prompt: unlock [drive] (for the locked drive)
attrib c:\ -r (for the read only drive)

[costa_D_27]

"From a command prompt: unlock [drive] (for the locked drive)
attrib c:\ -r (for the read only drive)"


I'm sorry for my lack of computer literacy, but could you please explain this to me in a little more detail?  As in, where do I get to the command prompt?  How do I change it? etc...  Sorry for being such a hassle.  Thank you.

[2k_dummy]

Once you're booted into windows, go to start/run, type command, click OK. Press enter after each command. When you finish entering commands, type exit and press enter.

[costa_D_27]

So far I have typed unlock[G:], unlock[G], unlock[g:\], unlock[G:\], UNLOCK[G:\], unlock [G:\], and unlock [G:\].  (G is one of the drives that has become locked).  There are two responses that come up....one is, 'UNLOCK' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file....and the other is, the filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect.  ........sorry for being such a hassle....I really appreciate the help....

[2k_dummy]

Type the command without the [].

[costa_D_27]

I've tried several new combinations: unlockG:\, unlockG:, unlockG, unlock G:\, unlock G: and unlock G.  All that the command screen keeps telling me is "'UNLOCK' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file."  I really have no idea what is going on....thank you for your patience.