Administrator account tied to old Windows installation

Hey everyone, just joined TenForums. Hope I can get this sorted.

Recently, I bought myself a secondhand computer. It had Windows 10 (version 19044) on the (C:) drive and a partition (E:) and an account set up already, which was an admin account. I thought at first it was strange that while I was using it it would automatically launch everything as an admin - it also had the weird quirks of the Microsoft Store being unavailable no matter what I did to restore it as well as the system tray being hidden among other problems. I carried on using the PC like normal despite this though, installing programs and games and using it as my workhorse. In retrospect, this was a pretty dumb move as I should've just reinstalled Windows right then and there.

Anyways, I recently got an SSD for my computer and installed an unactivated version of Windows (version 19044 still) on a completely blank drive there via the media creation tool on Microsoft's website as an ISO. Everything got set up and ready, I went through the whole little set up thing Windows makes you go through, i.e signing in to your Microsoft account and whatnot. Lo and behold, I found that while I was going through File Explorer, everything was gone. Namely, the things associated with a user profile like the Downloads, Documents, Pictures folders .etc. I was expecting that when I made the account my experience would continue on like normal, just on a faster system now since I got the SSD. And so, I tried to fix it by following a guide that was posted here by Brink, by going into RegEdit and setting some parameter that had the word "Image" in it to the user profile you wanted. I don't think that worked as nothing happened. I also tried setting the C drive's security to Everyone in hopes of fixing it as I was prompted that I don't have access to the Downloads within the Administrator's folder in Users. I'm pretty clueless right now, I also don't know if the original account I had before I got the SSD was the built-in admin or the hidden admin, but my bets are on my guess that its the built-in admin one. I also can't reach the old account without using the old version of Windows instead of the one I installed on my SSD.

Any advice? Thanks

Hello, thanks for the answer. How do I go about doing that? Do I just use Take Ownership from the context menu?

Though as much as possible, I'd really much prefer that I keep using the old administrator account on my SSD and use programs on already installed on my HDD? Is that possible?

I don't really want to go through reinstalling all the programs again on my SSD as it seems like I can only use those programs on the old admin account. DLL errors and other stuff that isn't fun show up if I attempt to.

Oh alright then, I see. Looks like I can only keep files there on my old HDD but not programs. I think I'm just going to backup the files that I have there and format everything else that I can't use in my old hard drive and install programs on my SSD instead. Thanks for the help

If the Windows on the old hard drive is still completely intact, you can clone it to the new SSD and pick up where you left off with the old Windows. However, from the sounds of things, you are much better off with a clean install of Windows.