Suspected Permissions problem after restoring to Factory Settings

Hello everyone,

I'm currently having an issue accessing many of the files on my computer. I suspect a permissions problem.

Due to performance issues (as well as a problem with creating and keeping System Restore points), I recently did a clean re-install of Windows 7 (restored my Toshiba Satellite to out-of-the-box state).

After that, I restored all of my personal files from an external HD (WD Passport).

However, now I'm unable to open many of my files.

I initially ran into this problem when trying to open many of the sheet music PDF files I have stored in my Music folder. After seeking help in the Adobe Reader forum, someone directed me to this link: Learn How to Take or Assign Ownership of Files and Folders

This started to get me on the right track. I followed the directions there, but it didn't do the whole job. Instead, I also did this:

Right click on "Music" > Properties > Sharing Tab > "Share..."

This opened another window ("Choose people to share with"). There was only one name listed--Lauren S. with Permission Level of "Owner." I didn't add anything, only clicked "Share" at the bottom of the window. Somehow this gave me access to the files in my Music folder.

My big problem is that I can't seem to replicate this success with any of my other folders. For instance, I can't open ANYTHING (pdf, doc, odt, txt, etc.) contained in my Documents folder. Trying to follow the same steps didn't do the trick.

I'm not sure what to try next, but this is preventing me from doing work for my job and it is critical that I resolve this as soon as possible. Any help is appreciated!

Thanks,

Lauren

Well, I seem to have come across something that fixed my issue in part.

Through the CMD prompt, I entered the following:
icacls "C:\Users\MY NAME\My Documents\EACH SUBFOLDER" /reset /t

I'm not sure why, but I couldn't do this just for "My Documents." It only worked if I did each subfolder individually.

Since my original post, I also discovered I couldn't open anything in "My Pictures" either.

The above command prompt didn't work for the general "My Pictures" folder, and before resigning myself to typing it for every subfolder, I decided to screw around in the Properties tab and figured out a solution through sheer dumb luck.

I can't say precisely what I did, but it was something like this:

Right Click on "My Pictures" > Properties > Security > Advanced

Once here, I cleared "Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent" and somehow deleted all the users listed under the "Permission entries" list

Somewhere in here, I got some scary looking boxes that popped up with warning about users and permissions, but after several hours of dealing with this nonsense, I was just like, "F*** it, let's try," and clicked OK on everything.

After that, I clicked on the "Owner" tab (at this point "Current Owner" had a note that they were unable to display the current owner).
Clicked on "Edit..."> Other Users or groups... > Advanced... > Find Now
From this list, I selected "Administrator" with my Name next to it.

I clicked "OK" on everything till I got to the main Properties window.

I clicked on the Sharing tab and clicked "Share..." then "Share" again in the next window.

Through some weird stroke of fate, I was able to access all of my pictures instantly!

No obvious repercussions yet. Hopefully I didn't screw something up. But I'm glad to have access to my files (at least so far).