Sorry for the NVC use of bandwidth here. but.......I'm desperate!

Are there any Computer Guru's amongst The List membership?? I have a
data loss problem and hope I can recover if possible.

Here is how it went down.......

Mother board died. New board installed. Unable to acquire original type,
so Windows XP had to be reloaded. In loading, Windows decided that the
old My Documents file folder could no longer be used and created a new
My Documents file folder. On the root directory under Documents and
settings it created a new folder with my name as John1 and the old
folder of the name John was somehow locked. I cannot access the old
folder. Windows says it's now empty, but I don't believe it. Even if it
were empty, Windows should open the folder. But I keep getting a message
"Access Denied". So, can anyone help with this one. If the files in that
folder still exist, I have hope of recovery. If not, I should at least
be able to open the folder and look to confirm they are gone.

Any help would be appreciated.

Please respond off list.

Thanks,

John Rodgers
88 GL Driver