Windows 7 permission denied error

I've tried every single solution out there and nothing works. Here's the deal; I had WIndows XP. I backed up some stuff to an a drive. I installed Windows 7. Now I'm trying to access the files I backed up and I get access denied errors.

Things I've done that haven't worked:

• Changed ownership to my main user account
• Ran cacls over the offending folder
• Ran explorer as admin to access files
• Gave full (recursive) permissions to just about every network entity north of the equator

I did see the "old" NTFS account S1-34534-3453(and so forth) and replaced myself as owner/admin/omnipotent being.

Nothing has worked thus far. Any help is appreciated.

As an aside, could a dual boot with linux access the files?

I've definitely run into this numerous times doing data recovery for friends. The solution that works every time is amusing: borrow a friend's Mac. They just ignore the file permissions :-) If you want to copy it back to your PC, just copy it to another drive.

Unfortunately, I finally figured out what the issue was. I hadn't been paying attention to the color of the text for the files and directories. They are green indicating that the files are encrypted. It seems that XP pro encrypts files by default? Not altogether sure but what I'm reading is that those files are gone...no way to retrieve them. So, this wasn't a Win7 issue at all.