Access Denied? But I'm an admin you say! You cannot access folders like "Local Settings", "My Documents" and "Application Data" because in Vista they are actually located elsewhere. The dim icons with the shortcut links you see are actually referred to as "Junctions". These junctions are used by Vista for compatibility but really just redirect programs to the proper location in Vista. Now it would be helpful if the Windows File Explorer treated these like shortcuts and took you to the new location, but instead you get the very intuitive "Not accessible" / "Access Denied" error, leaving you to think changing permissions may be a good idea. Don't. Leave them alone and let Vista do it's thing. As a savvy Vista user, you should go to the new "proper" location and identify these locations as legacy remnants of days past.
So what is what? Here is a quick dump from my system to help illustrate junction points and where they point programs…
Directory of C:\ProgramData
Application Data [C:\ProgramData]
Desktop [C:\Users\Public\Desktop]
Documents [C:\Users\Public\Documents]
Favorites [C:\Users\Public\Favorites]
Start Menu [C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu]
Templates [C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Templates]
Directory of C:\Users\Bob Kelly
Application Data [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming]
Cookies [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Cookies]
Local Settings [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Local]
My Documents [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\Documents]
NetHood [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts]
PrintHood [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Printer Shortcuts]
Recent [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent]
SendTo [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo]
Start Menu [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu]
Templates [C:\Users\Bob Kelly\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Templates]
Curious about your own particular system? While replacing my name with your own will likely do the trick, you can see just what your system thinks of these junction points by
opening a command prompt as administrator and using the /al switch provided by the DIR command. Navigate you way to the folder in which you want to look and run "dir /al" or from the root run "dir /al /s" to dig through all the directories on your system.