I RECENTLY got a new hard drive after I got a virus so I decided to just install windows on my new hard drive and use my old one as an external storage medium. The old one still had windows installed, but whenever I tried booting off of it my computer went into an endless loop of "press f5 to ENTER recovery mode" so I did and reinstalled WINDOW's system files. I restarted thinking it would work but it kept looping the same text. So I went into recovery mode again, but this time I chose the "make backup and reinstall windows option". Now I have a new windows installed and a folder that says "Backup 11-12-08" (or something like that) with everything that was there before I reinstalled windows. Now it still won't boot and the same loop keeps coming up, but this isn't even the problem.
I can't access any of my files! When I'm running windows from my new drive and I have my old one connected from a hard drive enclosure I can't navigate past my user folder (ex. D:\Backup11-12-08\Documents and Settings\Me\). I can only do so when I boot off of a linux live cd (backtrack) but I still can't delete or change the privilages. The only way I SEE how I could recover all my stuff is to copy it to another storage medium (which I can't afford)(not even dvds since I need to be booting off of a live cd to see any of the files) and format my old hard drive when I'm done. I want to be able to access my files without having to use backtrack every time so my question is:

Is there a way I can GET access to my files while I'm in windows? I've tried using a file unlocker but it didn't recognize the folder as locked]How to Take Ownership of Files in XP