Recently my Dell Latitude D400 died (Primary disk 0 error) but fortunately (or so I thought) I had recently backed up to Maxtor one touch II (100G) external hard drive. However, when restoring the most recent restore point all that I can access on my new computer (Viao SZ230P/B, Windows XP O/S) are old files (ie my most recent files won't seem to come across to my computer from the external drive). This is even though I can see the newer files on the restore point on the external HD. When I try to restore the new files individually it appears to work but when I try to open them on my computer I get an 'access is denied' message.
Can anyone help. I am in a bad way here and could lose lots of very important information and hard work at that....
Thanks a lot. All suggestions gratefully received.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic