I think there are two problems here.

I have decided it's time to pitch out the Norton again, the annual renewal is coming up, so I did some research and decided that I'd like to try to free one from Comodo. Before doing anything to my Norton files, I downloaded Comodo files, and while I was setting up to download their related suite, I did an on-the-fly setup of a new folder to place them in. When I tried a few minutes later to open folder, access was denied. There isn't anything in it, but I can't remove it or open it. "Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access them."

This morning I swapped out my old CD drive for a new DVD burner (now I have two DVDs on this computer). When I tried to open and install a small program to use with this DVD (not one from the manufacturer, something else) I can't open it. Access is denied. I've opend various other folders and files, but there are a few, that seem to be related to the DVD, that don't work.

The Specs

I have an HP a820n PC, and the layout when I purchased it was a DVD-LightScribe burner and a CD player. It's just over 2 years old. I replaced the original DVD-burner last year when it died, and I put in an HP 840 LightScribe (it had orignally a 640).

I've been meaning to update to 2 DVD players, and I found a great sale this week, so picked up a Pioneer DVD burner. It is in place, and has been tested and works fine. It purposely doesn't have LightScribe.

Okay. When I put in the HP DVD last year, I neglected to move the little jumper from slave to master. So all of this time it has been in place, it wasn't dominant. Opening a program that looks at those drives would default to the CD player and I had to select the DVD. I realize this may have had some small affect on how it worked, but I can't think it was much. I put the HP in the lower position and the new Pioneer in the upper, and the Pioneer is now the master and the HP is still the slave. They're both burners.

When I downloaded software to use with the DVD (trying to remove the zones so I can play European DVDs for films that will never make it ti DVD in the states) I wonder if it was immediately associated with the system in such a way that now I can't open them? I just did a test and re-downloaded one of the programs to my desktop, set it up, and it opens fine. So how do I get rid of the block that has inserted it self between me and these few files that won't open? I use the computer as administrator, so that isn't an issue.

I do think that sitting down to do several things at once has probably commingled some stuff, or at least, commingled the things that must be considered in this permissions problem. I haven't deleted Norton yet. I wonder about simply using the system restore will work? I'm going to save this and then launch it, and see what happens. But I suspect I'll be back.

SRS