"access is denied" on an old xp drive now used as backup on a vista system

I've read tutorials on how things like My Documents in Vista are really junctions to new file paths, but I still haven't been able to figure out how to apply it to my situation.

The power kicked out on my old computer, and I had another PC lying around, so I stuck it in as a back up drive to access the files I still wanted. So, the old drive that used to run XP is no longer the operating drive, just used for storage, it's the D drive and now there's a new C drive. I'm able to access just about everything I want except for what's in "my documents". I keep getting "access is denied".

I've looked for the new file paths listed here:
Access Denied to Documents and Settings - Vista

on this back up drive and on the new operating system drive. but I could only find the old "my documents" folder on the old drive (D), and the "documents" folder on the new drive with the operating system installed (C) only has new files I've created or d/led since I've installed the operating system.

I don't know if it makes a difference, but I get a little triangle with an exclamation mark instead of the red circle with an x when I get the "access is denied" message.

Any help would be much appreciated. I've taken ownership of the whole drive, but I read that doesn't apply in this situation.

The "My Documents" folder in your C:\Users\username folder in your Vista drive is a junction but that doesn't affect the My Documents folder on the old XP drive which is still a real folder, not a junction.

You should be able to get access to that folder in Vista, if you can fight your way through the ownership and permissions maze.

If you have various user accounts, log in as the Admin user. Right-click a link to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu and click "Run as administrator". That way everything you do in that Explorer window will have elevated priviledges and you won't keep getting UAC prompts. In Explorer, right click the My Documents folder on the XP drive, click the Security tab and give lots of rights to the account you are currently using. Then you might be able to copy files out of it into an ordinary folder which you should make outside of any user folders.

If all else fails, you could try running Linux from a live CD, such as the Ubuntu installer CD (no need to actually install Ubuntu onto the hard disk). Recent versions of Ubuntu include a file manager which can access NTFS partitions. It is less obedient of NTFS security restrictions so it might allow you to copy the files from My Documents on the XP drive to an ordinary folder on the Vista drive.