The Last Access Time is the time a File or a Folder is accessed the last time. This helps identify document age and status. This is disabled by default in Windows Vista and Windows 7 by default as this can add to the overhead of Disk I/O and performance although with the newer hardware this can be anything close to negligible.

Enabling Last Access Time is recommended when running Sandbox in parallel to exporting assets from Max or Maya.

If you choose to enable the Last Access time in Windows 7, 2008, Vista or earlier versions you can either use FSUTIL (not available in Windows 2000) or from the Windows Registry.

Using FSUTIL (not for Windows 2000)

From the Command Prompt as an Administrator run the following command: (In Windows 7/Vista/2008, click Start – search for cmd.

Right-click and choose "Run as Administrator" to run Command Prompt with elevated privileges) then type the following to enable Last Access Time recording:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 0

Later if you need to disable, run the following command:

fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1

From Windows Registry

1. Click Start – search "regedit" (Windows 2000/XP/2003 Start – Run – regedit) to launch Windows Registry Editor.
2. In the left-pane, navigate to the following registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]

3. In the right-pane, double-click NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and set its value to 0. This key doesn't exist by default in Windows XP, 2003 and earlier, so in the right-pane right-click and select New – DWORD and name it as NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate and set its value as 1.
4. Restart the system for the changes to take effect.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff794679%28v=winembedded.60%29.aspx