I set up a dual boot setup for Win7 and Vista, installing Win7 to new partition on a separate hard drive. Under Vista, the Win7 partition boots as M:\ and vice versa when booting into Vista.One of the first things I did was set Vista to share the c:\users directory so I could have access to the \documents folder and my Mozilla and Thunderbird data. When I went into Win7, I had some issues accessing the files in C:\users so I took the folder and did a drag and drop into the Libraries icon on the task bar. That worked well in Win 7 but it effectively nuked the permissions in Vista.Now when I enter Vista I get multiple errors as programs attempt to load and write to c:\users. I've tried multiple methods of gaining ownership of the directory in Vista but they haven't worked.I tried to create a new Administrator account in Vistaso I could use that account to access the Users directory but Vista can't open the new account. Then, in a stroke of genius, I changed my main account in Vista to User account with the hope that if I made it an admin account again, it would allow access to the folder. However, to elevate the account back to an Admin account, you need an admin account. The only admin account under Vista is the new profile which doesn't work.I then tried the "Take Ownership" registry hack found athttp://www.petri.co.il/add-take-ownership-context-menu-vista.htm. Unfortunately, I still coudn't get programs or data loaded up in Vista, evenif Vista has ownership of C:\users. Plus I can't access the files in Win7.My plan in the long run is to format the Vista C: and install the Win7 RTM clean, using my backup before the wipeto restore my data. At this point, I have to live in the Win7 beta as Vista is no longer functioning. I was hoping I could still use Vista nowif I had to. Any thoughts on a way to get the \users directory to work with Vista then allow it to be shared between Win7 and Vista?Thanks.

hoping I could still use Vista nowif I had to. Any thoughts on a way to get the \users directory to work with Vista then allow it to be shared between Win7 and Vista?As you already discovered that wont work. There are files there that are specific to the OS so you can't have a situation where one OS's files are overwritten by the other OS.You can however share the Documents and Download folders in a User profile.

Here is something for you to try to fix your Vista install. Boot into safe mode. Since you effectively have no admin accounts, this should allow you to log in as the local administrator. Give your normal account admin rights. Open up a command prompt and issue takeown /U your_username /F c:\users\your_user_account /R /D Y The action may take a while. When done, see if you can boot normally back into Vista.