I had the same problem I had a windows xp system that was protected with a password. I did the hp system recovery. After that I didn't have access to my previous "my documents".It displayed 0kb and error message that I had no access to that folder. I tried recovery tools non of them worked witch is logic because the files were not deleted, I just couldn't access them. I also tried windows system recovery that didn't worked either. Then I looked for the folder c:/userdata. It wasn't there. Then Linux saved my life. I booted with ubuntu (you can also use knoppix) live cd. Browsed to "my documents". I could access all my files and back them up. I only had to mount my harddisk in ubuntu.
