Well, I have searched high and low and can't seem to find an answer to this, no doubt it's out there and hopefully someone can show me the err of my ways. I have a FAT32 USB2 connected external hard drive with a large amount of data from my previous XP system. I am simply trying to delete old data but keep encountering access denied. My first inclination was to think it was a file ownership issue. Upon trying to change ownership though I am given an "access is denied" message for that as well. I tried disabling UAC just in casethat was doing something, no difference in behavior though. My user account is also admin, so I'm at a loss as to what the problem is, any help appreciated. Thanks.

FAT32 has no concept of security or ownership, are you sure it isn't NTFS formatted? If so, did you make sure the "replace owner on files and subfolders" was checked when you took ownership?

That is what I thought to, but for some reason Vista does have the ownership option for some files and directories on this drive. They all are set to unknown and can't be changed it seems. I can boot into Windows XP and delete/move files around this drive to my hearts content, but Vista is somehow "protecting me"I have gone into disk management to double check the file system type, and it reflects FAT32, both under XP and Vista. My other drives are all NTFS. I tried every trick I could think of to delete these directories under Vista, and it just wouldn't let me do it. Very annoying.