file retrival

I recently had to reinstall windows xp. I thought I had saved my files, but I had not. So is there anyway to retrieve my files and programs that were there before the reinstallation?

 

Hello Marie and welcome to the Board,

After a format, not without heroic efforts - meaning the kind of efforts professional recovery services use.

Regards - Charles

 

I recieved an email from Marie Davis:

Hi Marie,
When you reinstalled Widows, part of the process is to wipe the Hard Drive of everything prior to reloading the Operating System. That sounds like what happened. Everything includes your files and the programs that were installed with the previous copy of Windows.

In a situation like that, any programs that were installed have to be reinstalled - can't copy the installed programs - and any personal data should have been copied out to a CD for reloading to the Hard Drive after the OS and programs were reinstalled.

To see whether the drive was wiped, click on My Computer, double click on the C drive. Are your files there at all? Look in the Program Files and see if any programs are there.

If the answer is yes, then during the install, the Hard Drive was not wiped (formated) and your data is still there. In that case, you still have to reinstall all your programs becasuse the new Windows doesn't "know" about them. Any personal data in My Documents or My Pictures and the favorites are gone in any case - these are folders that are part of the operating system and unless backed up are gone.

If the answer is no, you do not see any of your personal data, than your data is gone and pretty much beyound retrieval.

Please answer here - click on the reply button at the bottom of the last post.
Others here may have questions/suggestions or may explain the situation better

Regards - Charles

 

Recieved a reply by email again from Marie:

Regards - Charles