Fail permission to access desktop icons.

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I have had the strangest thing happen to me. I have WindowsXP on a laptop.
It has worked for well over a year fine.Then suddenly I cannot open (most)
files I have as icons on my desktop. I am the only user and have
administrator status. For example if a click on the Microsoft Word icon. It
comes up with:-

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have
permission to access the item".

If on the other hand I select the word program from the start/menu system it
comes up fine. Many (but not all) of my icons are now behaving like this. I
cannot figure out what happened. Since I am an administrator why can I
access everything? If I make a new user the (new) desktop icons work fine,
but most of my original desktop icons and program data is missing.

Would really like suggestions. What do you think is the cause. Is there an
easy fix. Is there an easy way to drop all my icons/data access etc to the
new user I created and simply delete the old one.