permissions issue I think

[G.]

I developed a problem with user 'gary' which is the user I first set
up when I installed ubuntu 10.10 (upgrade from 10.04). The problem was
that the wireless would not connect to the connection I had been
using for some months.  I set up a second user, 'Spanish.'  The
wireless device connected perfectly.  After some time trying to figure
out what was wrong with the wireless connection, I decided it would be
easier just to move the files I had in gary over to Spanish.  Fine, no
problem.

However, I have most files stored on a partition called Data.  For
some reason, some of these folders are restricted from use by the user
Spanish.  I changed the home folder in Spanish to home/gary.  That did
not help.  I logged in as 'gary' to see if I could change the
permissions from there, and I get the following two errors:

1) usr/lib/libconf2-4/gcnonf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256
2) could not update ICEauthority

1)
I read http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1587918.  I tried
changing permissions with sudo chown.  I tried a coupe of other things
so I could get back into 'gary'

2)  I tried deleting home/gary/.ICEauthority but file is not found.

I tried several other things with 1 and 2 without success so i need a
bit of assistance.