Administrator cannot anything: Access to the specified device, path, or file is denied.

From: kgstrong (kgstrong_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 02/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 04:34:43 -0800

I have a strange problem. I am running Win2k Pro on a stand-alone
machine. It is not networked and only has a single user (me), so I
log-on as Administrator all the time. I changed the name of my
Administrator account recently - tinkering. After I changed it and
logged in with the new administrator name, I couldn't run anything: not
from a desktop icon or the start menu. Everything I tried gave this
error message: "Access to the specified device, path, or file is
denied". It did not matter what drive or directory the program was in -
nothing worked. Left-clicks will not work, but I can do anything
available from right-click. So I thought: this is a permissions
problem, right?

So I went into safe mode, and checked the permissions for the user: Full
Control. However, the owner of all directories was "Administrator" not
the "new name". I changed the owner of the root directory and all
subdirectories to the "new name".

That appeared to fix it for several days. But then I removed an
application program that required a restart to complete. After the
reboot, I was locked out again. Nothing seems to have changed: "new
name" still owns the directories and has Full Control permissions.

I went into safe mode and added "new name" to the Administrators group
and made Administrators the owner of all files and directories on the
hard drives. Then I gave Full Control to "new name" in the root
directory on the hard drives and checked the "Reset and inherit
permissions on all child objects". Then I can reboot and operate normally.

The problem always recurs the next time I have to reboot. Re-assigning
permissions to all files on the drive from safe mode (which takes 3
hours on my machine), then rebooting, fixes the problem until the next
reboot. Cannot find anything in security settings in MMC that helps.
I've also tried using CACLS from the CMD prompt.

I've run virus scans with Norton, McAfee, Panda, and TrendMicro - nothing.

I'm confused! HELP!