gerrard

having said all that I looked some more and applying new ownership properties at the top-level folder does not appear to work BUT this is possibly because some of the lower level folders contain "dodgy" files such as "thumbs" and "desktop". The way around this is to start at each "child" folder and take ownership of that folder by using the "properties tab" / security tab / advanced / edit / check BOTH boxes (replace all existing inheritable permissions)

Once you do this you find and isolate the rogue lower level folders which contain files the system refuses to tamper with. Then you can delete the compliant folders and leave the dodgy ones where you have to take ownership individually.

or thats how I did it anyway. My problem was that I have 25GB of music organised by WMP and somehow over the years some of the album folders seem to have acquired those odd files. Similarly just started tackling the photos but may opt to leave them in cache for now as I now have 45GB where before I had 20. Perhaps enough space to play with ubuntu, nah just kidding. The lesson here I think is be careful how you use offline files.

The reason I had this difficulty is the wireless connection between this vista/TV machine used as media extender and the home file server (XP) is not fast enough to transfer pictures and music never mind video unless you store offline copies in cache. I did not want to splash out on a new machine with TB of space until I understood the MC experience. A new machine with say 100GB assigned to the system disk or - maybe no partitioning - would probably not have stumbled over this issue at all. Interestingly the X-box works fine in this mode - albeit like an aircraft taking off.