this may be caused by a need to Take Ownership of folders and files.
It's not as easy as it was/is in Windows XP because there may also be Permissions that need amending, but to get you started, here's a couple of links, the first is guidance, and the second is a discussion of a problem;
Windows 7 Take Ownership and Grant Permissions to access files and folders, and
File permissions in Windows 7 - "Take Ownership" reports success but I can't access my files.
I hope they help.
Mark
I lost my laptop to a lightning storm surge through my cable modem recently, and although my laptop HDD spins up fine and I can access most things within my HDD, whenever I go to C:\Users and try to open up my file, it says access is not permitted, and when I right-click and open up Properties, it shows the size of my profile to be 0 bytes. Is this the indication of a BitLocker-ed drive? I don't remember locking it... I had no reason, and I certainly don't have a 48-digit key for it.
Can I boot to this drive to solve this problem? Or am I just stuck up a Louisiana crick with no paddle?
I had Windows 7 Ultimate on an HP Pavilion dv6t-1000 laptop. Please help!

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic