UAC And Other Sorrows

Y'all have to forgive me for perhaps not being too knowledgeable but as stated before I graduated on to a brand new machine with Vista 32 bit Home edition from WIN98SE with a whopping 128MB memory and a 400 processor which worked just fine and fast for my needs until lightning and a bad surge strip took it off my hands.
What I'm having problems with and which is driving me crazy are the UAC/Administrator controls. Let me say up front that for now I only have one account set up and for now it's without a password; UAC is set to "ON" so when I log in it's always as an administrator, right?
Here's my "not understanding": there are files I can open and/or change, others I'll be prompted for an o.k. but then there have been quite a few with "access denied" even though I am the administrator.
For example >computer>os(C:)>users>"name">application data>, access again is denied and when I look under properties "name (name-pc\name)", "system" and "administrators (name-PC " all inherited from "C:\users\name" have full control but "everyone" did not. Just to try, I gave "everyone" full control which I didn't expect to be able to do because it wouldn't let me open the d...... thing in the first place but, voila, it worked!
Now, why wasn't I allowed to open the folder "application data" but then was permitted to change its security settings? This "access denied" issue is driving me up a wall; I'm always in there as an administrator, right, no, yes?
One more question, and we can use "application data" as an example;
why is it listed twice in the left panel in computer, once at the very beginning in "folders" under ">name>application data>" and then again further down under ">computer>os(C:)>users>name>application data>"? BTW, after changing the security setting I was able to open BOTH application data folders and I hope that the name of my computer being the same as my only and administrative account has nothing to do with my problem. A patient answer would be appreciated; totally confused in Texas.

Yo Tex,

I can't tell you anything as I know little, but if you are new here I CAN direct you somewhere that you might find your answer, or at least find some of your answer. Try looking at the stuff in the following link. Until one of the Vistax64 experts comes along to this thread, you might find a little help there. The link is to the UAC tutorials on this sight. Hope it helps you out for the present.

Tutorials - Vista Forums

EDIT: Oh BTW, BOOMER SOONER BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the quick response and the link, I'll give it a try!

Hi hdbg62,

Welcome to the forums.

You have found the junction points/folders. These are used to point older apps in the right direction. You can find out more here:
Permission denied to access folders

If you turn on 'Hide system files' they will vanish.

Hope that helps.
Gary