Recycle Bin Corrupt after changing permissions

Hi all:

Two seconds after I did it I realized I just pulled something worthy of a minor Darwin award, but alas such is life and now I need to fix it.

Trying to solve a problem where Vista wouldn't let me copy certain directories on my Dell laptop running Vista Business I went to the root and apply permissions for full control of the disk with inheritable permissions giving rights to administrators, creator/owner, system, and authenticated users. I'm the only user ever for this laptop and am an administrator per my domain administrator rights, btw.

Now the Recycle Bin is corrupt (with files I'd like to review before purging), and I'm afraid if I try to reboot I will not be able to get back into the system.

So what I need to find out are:

1.) What permissions do I need to set the recycle bin to have in order to be able to access it?
2.) What permissions do I need to set in order to ensure I will be able to log in after a reboot?

In addition, I'm going to go ahead and perform a backup but have questions regarding the backup utility and the backup images that are created.

1.) If I use the Backup Files option, will it backup the corrupted recycle bin?
2.) Can I somehow access the recycled backup files on another machine?
3.) Can I strip the ACLs when backing up so that it will always restore?
4.) What is the difference between "Back up files" and "Back up computer"?
a.) Does the latter back up all files too?
b.) Can "Back up files" be used for a full system restore?
c.) If I do "Back up Computer" can I get access to the files individually?
d.) Do I need to do both?

I know the answers to some of the questions are obvious, but I'd hate to have wrong assumptions and because of that be unable to reboot my computer.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.