Error Applying Security: Access is denied

[yawnmoth]

I have a hard drive whose root directory and some of the subfolders
grant me Full control permissions. I'd like to grant myself Full
control permissions for the rest (I'm an administrative user) so I, in
the Advanced Security Settings dialog, click on the my user account
(or rather, the Permission entry that corresponds to my user account),
click Edit, hit Edit again on the new dialog box, check off "Apply
these permissions to objects and/or containers within this container
only" and hit OK and then Apply. I then get the following:

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Error Applying Security

An error occured while applying security information to:

D:\path\name

Access is denied.

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I cancel, go to that path, do the same thing as before, and... it
works.

I go back to the root folder and check off "Replace all existing
inheritable permissions on all descendants with inheritable
permissions from this object" and I get the same "Error Applying
Security" setting.

I'm the owner of all the files. I just can't update their security
settings en mass. My question is... why? And what can I do to fix
it?