I just upgraded to Windows 7, and now I'm having trouble working with some files that were on an external drive. Naturally, the user that created them doesn't exist anymore. On some files, the administrators group in Windows 7 was automatically granted full control, but for some reason not on others.
In particular, I'm trying to delete a bunch of files. So, I first set the owner of the parent folder to me, and checked the box to apply recursively to subfolders. Then I tried setting the owner to the Administrators group. I tried adding full permissions to "Everybody" and propagating the change to all subfolders. None of this works - the propagation doesn't work. Depending on exactly what I try next, I'm sometimes being told that I need permission from "Josh" (my own user account) to do things. Other times I'm told I need permission from the "Administrators" group, which I'm in. Sometimes I get a vague "access is denied" message, without saying why.
The subfolders of the folder I'm trying to delete all have lock icons on them. After messing with their permissions for a bit I can get the locks to disappear, but still can't delete them or propagate permissions past them. Even if it worked I can't change each of the thousands of folders manually.
What's going on? What should I try next? How come, as an admin user, I can't take control of just any file?
