Jesper

> I have only one account set up on my computers because I am the only one
> that uses then, RE: Administrator. Am I in need of creating another
> account?

No. Your account is an administrator, that's fine.

> No it not the main hard drive, it is an external drive that has all my
> download files on it since 1999 that are important as I use them daily or
> weekly

No worries then.

> So, I have gotten into the hard drive to access the folder & sub-folders. I
> want to take full control of this hard drive. If I need to set up an
> account to do this & go through all this, I can, but I prefer always logging
> in as Administrator as I need to be logged in as Administrator for all my
> daily tasks on each computer.

You should not log on as THE Administrator. That account is disabled on
Vista, and should remain so. You may log on as AN administrator, i.e. an
account that is a member of the Administrators group. BTW, unless your daily
tasks involve debugging kernel mode drivers or something to that effect I
doubt they require you to be logged on as an administrator.

>I got away with it in XP Pro & never ran into any kind of
> problems, LOL especially as this hard drive issue.

Well, you are running into it now. It is not really related to what account
you used on XP Pro though.

> Once files are all transferred I want to reformat it & transfer them back,
> but firstly I need to take full control of the hard drive to do this. I
> prefer it in Administrator as that is what I log in as everyday.

How do you log on as the Administrator on Vista anyway? The account is
disabled and hidden from the logon screen. Did you re-enable it and unhide it
from the logon screen? That's a lot of work to go through to break the
security of the system. In fact, if you did that, I don't think you would
have this problem that you are describing anyway, because that account is not
subject to UAC if I recall correctly.

> Apparently
> from reading what you have written it is necessary for me to create another
> account?

No, in any case, you would not need another account to fix this. You can
give whatever account you are using full control over the files. Heck, since
you are going to wipe the drive anyway, just give Everyone Full Control over
it. That would definitely let you access the files to move them off and it
wouldn't hurt anything.