Thanks again for the suggestions.  Wasn't the read only check.  Finally called (I had called earlier but got the "we're not open" so thought it wouldn't be possible til Monday (and it was after west coast opening time).  When the call dropped we had tried numerous things without any success.  We were about to attempt to safe boot to see if there were some weird permission blockage.  But the called dropped and i've been trying ever since to get into safe boot with windows 10 (not easy) including getting the key to unlock the hard drive bitlocker.  i'm currently stuck because i got to safe boot but it won't accept any of my passwords.  unbelievable.  so still working on it.  Thanks again.