That sounds TOO easy
Well, the story is, if you back up your hard drive, then you reinstall Windows, move the files you want back, they won’t be accessible, even to Administrator, if they were private, like the contents of C:\Documents and Settings\Yourname.
You have to boot into safe mode, log in as Administrator, go to the Folder Properties you want, and remove the security restrictions.
I had to do a fair bit of digging to find that out.. but it’s not hard to get your files back. I’m sure there’s a Microsoft KB article somewhere about it; if anyone finds one, feel free to post it in the comments.