Path Security Issues!

Has anyone managed to get any productivity out of Windows 8 ?!?

I mean, even the smallest little things are now a big hazzle, and even the paths now seems to have all sorts of security issues!

My two main problems right now are:

1. If I click on a .REG-file on a network drive, nothing happen - the registry-settings are not merged into the registry.
   To merge the registry-setings into the registry, I have to copy the .REG-file to my local desktop, and then click it from here!
   This has never happend before on Windows 7!
2. I copy a picture to my C:\Windows\ folder on my local harddrive (The Windows installation folder).
   Now I want to assign the picture to an account as the account picture of the account to be shown on the login screen.
   But, when I click the [Change account picture] in the control panel, there's no way, I can get to that C:\Windows folder!!!!
   It will only allow me to select pictures from my 'Pictures' or any other Library!

And, yes, I have full administrator right to my computer (at least I think, since I'm not sure about anything on Windows anymore)

So, question is: How to be freely allowed to select any path for anything on this crappy system?!?

(Man! I can see Linux slowly appearing in the horizont)