A few weeks ago windows completely crashed and would not restart.
I asked the guy who built my computer to reformat my old hard drive and to install a new bigger one as well. Everythig was fine, exept that the documents and settings folder on my old hard drive came up with 'access denied'. This did not happen to the other 4 users as he was able to transfer all their old folders to the new hard. He did not reformat the old hard drive as this would have obviously wiped everything and I would have lost my documents. We passed the drive over to a Specialist company who said that they had retrieved my files, but wanted a small fortune for doing this. I cannot afford to pay the sort of money they were asking for. I use windows XP home. Is there anyone who can help
yours gratefully
Tartan

This should work:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421

Please note the distinctions for XP Home as opposed to Pro.