Removing Read-Only Attribute from folder

Has anyone found a way to remove the read-only attribute from a folder in WinXP Pro with SP2? I have tried from the properties tab, through the command line with attribute -r command, with the Administrator user and tried moving it to a shared folder. I have noticed i am only one of many people to have this problem. Why would Windows do such a thing? I understand for security reasons but why not have an option to remove for system administrators? I have a program that won’t work because of security privileges. Anyone have any new discoveries because I ran out of ideas.