"Access was denied by the operating system"

[Jonah]

Some time ago I created an encrypted Veracrypt volume on the external drive. The volume was created while I was using my old PC, which doesn't work any more.

Now I want to mount the volume from the external drive using my new PC. I type my password but get an error saying "Access was denied by the operating system". Does it mean, that the volume would work only on PC on which it was created and I permanently lost the files?

[Enigma2Illusion]

I assume you are using a file container created by VeraCrypt on the external HDD.

You are going to need to Google search Windows permissions and ownership on files.

The new computer will have a different ID number associated with the account name even if you are using the same account name from the old computer. Likely your external HDD is formated using Windows NTFS which has the security settings of the folders/files.

Different folders can have different permissions and ownership permissions for user accounts in Windows that are inherited when you place a file in that folder.

First, you may need to set the permissions and ownership on the dismounted file container. Then mount the file container. Set the permissions and ownership of all the files within the file container.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-and-folders-windows-10

[Jonah]

Thank you. Unfortunately it seems my files are gone for good. I managed to change permissions but there is still a small padlock symbol on the container file (you are right, is is placed on the external HDD). Somehow, it must be encrypted by EFS, because when I uncheck the "Encrypt contents to secure data" box I get an error "The specified file could not be decrypted". I do not have a PFX key file, I don't even remember decrypting it.