Windows 7: Can't copy files from external hard drive

I'm pretty sure it is a permission issue too, I just don't know how to fix it. I tried setting myself as the owner of all the directories the link referenced by Bill2. Looks like it may have improved the situation somewhat, but not totally fixed it.

It looks like maybe the destination appears to have a greater number of files after the copy because the source isn't showing me the correct number of files and size when I go to the folder Properties. Maybe it's not showing me data for folders and files it thinks I shouldn't have access to? Who knows.

I eventually got most of the files over by painstakingly going through each one and dealing with the problems as they came up. Not real impressed with this whole exercise. Until now I had been pretty impressed with Windows 7. Now I am depressed with it.

Did you read the article link posted from MajorGeeks.com yet? Did you try taking ownership of the entire folder and child permissions?

So I recently moved from XP to 7. Before I did this I created a backup of some files on my XP box and copied it to an external hard drive. Now that I'm on Windows 7 I've learned that there is really no way to directly restore the backup. So I have restored it onto a Vista box and copied the rehydrated files back onto the external hard drive. Now I just want to copy the files from the external hard drive to the main hard drive on my Windows 7 box. However, when I do this I get the following warning for some (but not most) folders:

"You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this folder"

My options are Continue, Skip, and Cancel. First off, I am an administrator on this box so I don't understand why it's asking my this. Secondly, if I choose Continue, it tells me that the folder I'm copying over already exists in the destination! What? The system is in the middle of copying it! Why is it asking me this? So I just tell it to proceed, but then it tells me the same thing about a few particular files and asks me if I want to overwrite them or ignore them. I usually say overwrite because they shouldn't be there yet. Anyway, by the time the whole thing is done, the destination folder is actually BIGGER and has more files than the same freaking folder on the drive I was copying from? How is that possible?

What is going on here? Why does a simple copy operation not work anymore?

So I recently moved from XP to 7. Before I did this I created a backup of some files on my XP box and copied it to an external hard drive. Now that I'm on Windows 7 I've learned that there is really no way to directly restore the backup. So I have restored it onto a Vista box and copied the rehydrated files back onto the external hard drive. Now I just want to copy the files from the external hard drive to the main hard drive on my Windows 7 box. However, when I do this I get the following warning for some (but not most) folders:

"You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this folder"

My options are Continue, Skip, and Cancel. First off, I am an administrator on this box so I don't understand why it's asking my this. Secondly, if I choose Continue, it tells me that the folder I'm copying over already exists in the destination! What? The system is in the middle of copying it! Why is it asking me this? So I just tell it to proceed, but then it tells me the same thing about a few particular files and asks me if I want to overwrite them or ignore them. I usually say overwrite because they shouldn't be there yet. Anyway, by the time the whole thing is done, the destination folder is actually BIGGER and has more files than the same freaking folder on the drive I was copying from? How is that possible?

What is going on here? Why does a simple copy operation not work anymore?