Why am I not surprised...UAC??

Just installed Vista Ultimate x64 and things seemed to be going ok until about an hour or so ago. Powered down to go out for a bit. Upon booting back up I get the login Icon (of which I am an administrator with password protect). I enter the password and I get into the computer. HOWEVER, whatever I click on - program, control panel, even to try and power down I get the following msg: "Windows cannot access the specified device,path or file you may not have the appropriate permissions to access this item." FUNNY, before I powered it down I could do all of this NOW I CAN'T. I clicked on the icon and it opened up another screen where I created another account and told it to make it an administrator with no pswd. Rebooted logged in using this account and still the same nonsense. HOW can I fix it to make it start working properly again????? I can't get the the UAC or control panel as it won't let me so I am in a circle??!! I had made a backup of the registry with ERUNT however, when I click on the program icon I get the above msg so I can't do the restore (in case its a registry problem). ANY HELP will be greatly appreciated..... THANKS!!

If you can access this, open msconfig from run and click on the tools tab and scroll down to the bottom and select Disable UAC. Try that.

Hope that helps.