Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Forum

You could try the Unlocker program: http://www.emptyloop.com/unlocker

Other things to try: make sure the Windows file association for that
particular file extension is correct. Try copying the folder containing the
files to another folder, then open them from the new folder. Try copying the
files individually, giving them a different name during the copy (i.e. copy
file1.jpg file2.jpg).

Copy the files to another drive, reformat the problem drive, and then restore
the files. Note that if you were using FAT32 then I recommend you change to
NTFS, it is much more robust and less problematic.

Let me know if any of these suggestions help, or if you figure out an
alternative solution.

If you don't have any backups(!), then recovery programs like the following may do the job:

Recover It All - http://www.dtidata.com/recover_it_all.htm
Advanced NTFS Recovery - http://www.ntfsrecovery.com
EasyRecovery - http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery
Stellar Phoenix - http://www.stellarinfo.com/recover-windows-nt.htm
GetDataBack NTFS - http://www.runtime.org

These can scan the drive looking for the original data structures and possibly recover the files. Here is an article with tests of some of these types of programs:

How To: Recover Your Deleted Files
http://www.maximumpc.com/2006/02/how_to_recover.html

If none of those work then you can send the drive to a data recovery company like ActionFront http://www.actionfront.com or DTIdata http://www.dtidata.com

Let me know how it all works out. Scott.