Computer help forum: C:\ is not accessible access is denied Location is not avail

As long as you think you have all rights, you may be stumped and won't look into the usual. Let's get past the "I'm the only user/admin" and remember that even the admin must obey NTFS permissions.

And you would try a new Admin account. And again the old lesson of the single account can not be forgotten. Keep an admin spare account.

Sorry that I can't guess which permission is off but we must get past the single user/admin hurdle before we can continue as well as getting our spare admin account in place.
Bob

Some of the newer antivirus suites do block root directory modifications. There is rarely a reason to do this to C:\ so we'll have to boot safe mode or keep digging as to why this PC differs.

https://www.google.com/search?q=C%3A\+is+not+accessible+access+is+denied+Location+is+not+available finds many prior discussions and I rarely duplicate these prior solutions.

Right or wrong, we get to use research on this. We've covered the basics here and good to read you now have a spare admin account.

-> Remember that many commands such as the CMD prompt will do this unless we "run as Admin". This is nothing new but I find folk that need to talk about Admin and God issues at times. In Linux for example, root is almost God like but you may still need to chmod this or that to dust off an item.
Bob

The run as admin is the usual answer. I've had to do that with CMD and from there I can use notepad to edit boot.ini which is in the root folder.
Bob

It's a slim one but my next move given only the clues so far is to try this in SAFE MODE. If that fails I'm off to run system scans if uninstalling the security suite doesn't bring it back to life.

This is the first solid clue that something is borked with this OS on this PC. Up till this point it sounded as if it's the old issue and discussion that we have to slog through.

Any more clues would be needed for me to not think this is some infection or antivirus protection.
Bob

If you need to do such, you elevate the prompt or app and we are done.

Remember I'm working as if what you told is true and not if this applies to all folders.

Scan? Grif notes them at http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102-5098912.html?tag=posts;msg5099421

It would be a shame to do all this work over the root folder issue.
Bob

ive dowloaded a couple of the links on the link above however once dowloaded i try to open and it immediatly brings up the pop up message
" windows cannot access C:\users\justinbowness\downloads\rkill.com"
(under details)
Error code: 0x800704b3

It's pretty rare but once in awhile you find folk tinkering with permissions and forget they did so. It took a lot of posts to see the full issue as I took your words as-is and know that the root folder is protected for very simple reasons.

Try the drive permissions next.
Bob