I had a gateway computer I bought in dec 2002. Anyway in Jan I bought vista ultimate and it ran fine until for some reason it decided to not start up.. no power to anything. the computer went to "sleep" one night and wouldn't start up.

That's not why I'm here though. I had 5+ years of files, pictures, and family videos on the 2 hard drives which I think are now locked with bitlocker. I tried installing them as secondary hard drives in the new computer, and the computer thinks they are blank and wants to format them. Am I correct in thinking they are locked? If they are, is there any way to get my files back?

Do not format them. Keep them attached. Click start and goto run, in the run box type cmd then click okay. This will take you too a command prompt. At the command prompt "chkdsk [the drive letter] /F" let this run. It might repair any damage done!! I just had to do this for a friends biz, I was able to recover everything.

Hope it helps. If you need help tomorrow during the day send me a PM.

Awesome! I'll do that tonight and report back in the AM.

Well I have nothing but errors.