Windows Support

I'm in the middle of a massive computer overhaul, and I'm left with some serious problems.  I have a new hard drive with a working operating system, but I'm having problems accessing a couple of my folders from my old hard drive (for some odd reason, the only folders that I can't access have some amount of porn on them? . . .).  Anyway, I keep getting the error message "Access Denied", and it tells me to make sure the folder isn't being used or write-protected.  I'm not able to change any properties of the folders either.  The folders say that they're Read-Only, but I can't change that.

I've run an error check on the hard drive already, and defragged the drive (where it was able to access the files in those folders). 

Why can't I access these folders?!

You don't have permissions set up on those folders. See, even if you reinstall Windows and use the same user names as before, the security identifier (SID) for your user account won't be the same, so your new user account no longer matches the permissions applied to any folders and files the old account had. To fix:

1. Turn off Simple File Sharing (uncheck the check box in the "View" tab of the dialogue box you get by going to Tools>Folder Options from any Explorer window).
2. Right-click>Properties on the folder that's giving you trouble and go to the "Security" tab.
3. Click the "Advanced" button, and go to the "Owner" tab in the dialogue box that appears.
4. Find your user name on the list and click it. Also, check the "replace owner on subcontainers and objects" checkbox. Click OK to apply (it may take a couple of minutes if there's a lot of files in there).
5. If you still get "access denied", add yourself as a user on the permission list in the security tab (as step 2 above) and give yourself full control.