Windows Xp Problem With Documents

Hey

Ok so on my laptop something important on windows got deleted and im guessing it was part of windows. Because now my computer wont boot.
So i ended up installing a new copy of windows onto the drive while leaving the orginal on the drive. All i want to do now is get the documents that i have in "my documents" folder. But now when i go into C:/Documents and Settings i can see the folders from the old version of windows but i cant access the folder ( says access denied ). This is because all of the users had passwords.

So my question is, is there a way to get into the folders?? I have tried to go in using the administrator but because they are not really considered users because they dont show up on the user list only there folder are now there.

Any help would be great. thanks.

 

I am not clear on what you have done. When you say i ended up installing a new copy of windows onto the drive while leaving the orginal on the drive I dont know what you mean.

Did you install the new version over top of the old version?

Did you make a new partition for the new version leaving the old version seperate?

 

ok so i just looked at it and it was some how installed right over the other one and the documents are still there.

Is there anyway to get my documents??

 

Right click the folder you want and check the properties.

I'm still not sure what has happened. If you did a repair install then all your folders should be fine but you say all the user accounts are gone so it sounds like you might have erased all your folders. If this is the case then you should not see any of your old data.

You say you can still see this folder, is all your other stuff still there. Pictures and what not?

 

Could it be an ownership issue, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

Steve

 

ok got it to work.

all i did was on the new copy of windows i went to the " my documents " folder while in safe mode and while being the administrator. Then i right clicked on the folder and changed the security settings.