My Passport Ultra Shows in My Computer but now says Administrator permission required and won't open the Security password program. I am locked out of my drives!

WD External Drives WD Portable Drives
1

My Passport Ultra external drives worked fine on my laptop which I left abroad. I USB connected them individually to several different PC’s back home and the icon shows as it should in My Computer so the drives are being recognized. BUT, click on that WD icon and it used to open the Security Shield program box to enter the password, and my hint would show in case I forgot the password. Now, when I click on the My Passport icon a warning triangle pings on screen and tells me Administrator permission required. I can’t get past this and the Security Sheild icon or drop down box on opening doesn’t even show. A check on Properties shows the drives are empty which I know is not true. My second WD My Passport on which I also set up the Security password protection malfunctions in exactly the same way. My third My Passport external drive which I never got round to using the security facility opens no problem. Password protection was a selling point of these drives and I have not forgotten the passwords, it just won’t open the Security program or the enter password box. How do I let the two locked drives know that I am the Administrator, or bypass this requirement, and get them to open the password entry box so that I can access all my data which I know for certain is still there even if the Properties pie chart shows it all one colour, no data? Can someone please help and explain? Thanks in advance.

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The Administrator Permission required is a Windows thing, not a WD thing.

For some reason, Windows thinks that you are NOT running the program as admin, just user.

Find the program in your Start Menu, then right click it and select “Run as Administrator.”

If that works, then I’d suggest uninstalling the WD software and reinstalling it to see if that corrects the permission issue.

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Thanks Tony, but that didn’t work.

I reinstalled the drivers from WD support and all installed except SES Device USB. So, I went through the procedure to install that - I don’t understand why it hadn’t automatically installed during Drivers Installation or even Windows Update!!! - and I got another Administrator only warning message.