Access Denied

Hi everyone, first time on this forum, thanks for all the help with getting win 7 up and running. Got a new desktop pc and managed to set up everything with the help of this forum. Long time xp user, never went to vista so had to learn lots of new stuff. Lots of good help here. Anyways managed to get everything up and running and lots of my old apps installed and operating. Took a bit to figure out work group vs home group so my xp laptop still works and even got to the network printer. Was feeling pretty good about how well this went until this AM....

Started up pc and surfed the web for about 1 hr, no problems. Went to explorer to learn more about how libraries works.. VERY confusing so far. I notice that there are TWO copies of my documents, one with an arrow pointing into the folder, figured something was writing to it, I'll just wait, lots of minutes go by and nothing is happening, task manager isn't running any apps, cpu usage is less than 5%. When I click on the file access denied. I go to C and see about 10 files with in arrows on the folders and the access denied message when you click on them.
While the access denied window was open the command line was turning green, ok I'll wait, just sat there for 10-15 min .. nothing. Looked at the files and found that that the SYSTEM was the OWNER of the files and I couldn't change.Tried to restore to two days ago.. again access denied error, couldn't restore. This went on for about 3 hours. I was just about ready to get out the boot disks and start over when the in arrows disappeared and everything went back to normal.

Has anyone seen this or have any idea what would cause this??

Thanks

The "Access Denied" folders are designed that way. The following post from another forum explains why.

"Local Settings, and Documents and Settings, is by design. These folders are Symbolic Links or Junctions (soft links) and cannot be used like a normal folder, which is why you are getting the access denied error when you try to open them. The only reason these folders are present are for backward compatibility.

These folder names were used in Windows XP and when a software program that was designed for Windows XP is installed or used, and it is hard coded to look for one of these folders, the soft link will silently redirect the software program to the new location in Windows 7. This is why you see a blue shortcut arrow on these folders. There are many other similar soft link folders which are easy to identify by the shortcut arrow.

Local Settings redirects to: C:\Users\user name\AppData\Local
Documents and Settings redirects to: C:\Users

These folders are normally hidden and the reason you are seeing them is because someone changed the option to show hidden files and folders in the Folder Options/View Tab.

All of these soft link folders have the 'Everyone - Access Denied' attributes. You should not try to make changes to the permissions on any of these folders, because this may negatively affect some programs that are currently installed, or may be installed in the future.

The System Volume Infomation folder is where all of the System Restore Points, and other Shadow Copies, are stored and these files are just raw code. There is no human readable content in that folder."

I have a bit of a tip to add. Do not take ownership of programdata. It will screw up programs when they try to make start menu entries.

Thanks for the answers.
Yes I did have the show hidden files ticked.

Any idea why it went away after 3 hrs??