Windows – WinRAR: Access is Denied when archiving

Disabling UAC is not enough.

You need to disable Admin Approval Mode (requires restart). More details here (option B, last screen shot): http://www.petri.co.il/disable-uac-in-windows-7.htm

This worked for me and now I can work w/ files and folders from Program Files w/o any more UAC prompts.

The problem is that your user (on the new computer) doesn't have access to the encryption keys (from the old computer) that were used to encrypt the files.

Windows, confusingly, gives an "access denied" error message when trying to read an EFS-encrypted file that you lack the encryption key for (e.g. files that were created on a different computer). This is independent of ownership/permissions.

If you can still boot the old computer, decrypt the files from the OS install that they were encrypted from.

If you can't boot the old computer, see these questions:

• How decrypt a file that encypted in other windows xp os
• EFS recovery from backed up registry files?

Edit: It probably isn't possible to boot the laptop HDD on a different computer (Windows is finicky about hardware). But don't panic; the certificate is in principle what you need to decrypt. The problem is getting the software to use it. Try Microsoft's EFS certificate migration for Windows 7.