Corrupt All Users\shared Documents folder

[John Woodgate]

My All Users\Shared Documents folder has lost 'Shared' from its
filename, which should be impossible. I think it happened when there was
a crash while trying to set up a home network. Now the folder is 'Access
denied' even to an administrator and Adobe Acrobat keeps trying to open
it but is unable, producing cascading error messages (Error 1317 while
attempting to create the directory C:\Documents and Settings\All
Users\Documents\Adobe PDF).

I have tried several ways of correcting this, such as registry scanners,
System Restore (which take 10 minutes to tell me it can't), 'repairing'
Adobe Acrobat, but nothing works.

I have Windows XP Home with SP3 (which installed without problems), so I
don't want to have to reinstall Windows. The computer's repair disc
won't work, because it's SP1.

 

[Ramesh Srinivasan, MS-MVP]

This is most likely a permissions problem. See:

Access is denied when opening the Shared Documents folder ?:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/sdperms.htm