Public Folders - some files/folders need admin privileges

First of all an alarm: Can you believe Administrator account on my Vista
machine had no password 8={. I can't remember being asked for one.

Now to my question: I moved some files from my folders and I wanted to take
write privilege of these but in error denied read and execute. Now, I can
access them with Admin privileges only. I have reset privileges back to what
they were but no luck.

Any thoughts!! I am puzzled. I can't move them or cut and paste them even
under Admin account.