Outlook backup

My computer had a virus and in order to get it running again i had to format the hard drive… i had backups of all my work on cds and have managed to reinstall clean copies of all my files excpet for my outlook contacts list. when i try to import the *.pst file it says the i cannot not acess this file as i do not have the premissions required. any ideas on why this could be… or anyway to get the contacts out of the file?