Thought I'd post seeing as I found out the answer.
It appears that an admin does not automatically own everything. You have to take ownership of the file / folder . The article explaining this is here.
http://support.microsoft.com/default...308421&sd=tech
To do this (and I'd already looked on the security tabs of disk properties) you have to disable "simple file sharing" and how to do that is on THIS page.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874/
Anyway, to anyone who expended any energies on this, thanks.
Dave