whats the server? because on a windows 2003 server you can have the following file permissions: Full control, Modify, read and execute, read, and write. For folder permissions you have: Full control, modify, read and execute, list folder contents, read, and write. I think from what i can gather from your question you will want Read and execute for file permission AND folder permission. Or you can set limitations on each user group, e.g. Admin, User etc. so all admin can have 'full control' of files and folders and minor users can only have 'read and execute' abilities.
Hope that helps
Matt
EDIT: File and folder permissions can be set on NTFS volumes