other ppl open new threads all the time incase you forgot also not every member that sees your post knows the answer+members here are from across the world (difrent timezones) , and i guess yours went to page2 cuz of that and no one noticed (its hard to keep track when theres new threads all the time) if you would have bump it few days back maybe you would have get an answer, why only after 5 days?
anyway back to the issue , you have xp home therfore you cant set permissions (only xp pro allows it,and you dont have that file sharing thing in folder options so you obviously got the home edition) so theres 3 possible things to do
edit i just rememberd, theres a software for managing file/folder permissions on xp home ,give it a shot
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Security-Related/File-Security-Manager.shtml
1) reformat and install xp pro,then youll be able to set permissions and regain access to the data
2) take the ext to a friend that have xp pro set file permissions and burn the data to cd/dvd media or copy to usb flash memory
3) use a linux live cd (they tend to ignore ntfs permissions)
knoppix /
kanotix/
slax (knoppix have builtin kernel ntfs write support but expirmental not sure how well it will work and kanotix have a util called captive for ntfs write support but i didnt had much luck with it, slax have a captive module you can add to the iso using an iso editor like ultraiso/magiciso) anyway use it to burn the data to cd/dvd media (if you have more then one optical drive that is) or copy it to a fat32 partition/usb flash/or try your luck with copying it to an ntfs partition
