Problem accessing files from Windows.

I'm using ubuntu 10.10 and I'm trying to figure out how to access my files from Windows. I found a guide to follow here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MountingWindowsPartitions

I downloaded the ntfs configuration tool and I can't seem to get it to load, neither in the gui or in the terminal. When I give the command in the terminal, after being asked for my password, I get this:

gksudo ntfs-config
    main(args, opts)
  File "/usr/bin/ntfs-config", line 75, in main
    app = NtfsConfig()
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/NtfsConfig/NtfsConfig.py", line 56, in __init__
    os.mkdir(HAL_CONFIG_DIR)
OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/etc/hal/fdi/policy'

Anyone have an idea what's going on? I'm completely new to ubuntu and Linux, so please take that into account.