Help Please !!!

[raysparx1]

Hi all, I have a major problem, my laptop would not load up yesterday, my son has managed to install xp today, but everyhing has vanished, and I mean everything, all my programmes, music, photos etc, when I looked on my computer, disc space is being used, so it looks as if all my stuff is in a black hole, is there any way of getting it back,? any help would be great, thanks all, Ray

[Ethel]

What a nightmare, Ray.

Have you tried Start - search

and typing in a file name you know should be there? See what comes up.

Look at the properties of your hard drive - is there an 'extra' drive? Has he managed to partition the drive so you are now in a 'new' drive?

Have you opened Windows Explorer to see what's there? That's a good starting point.

Are you sure you haven't logged in as a guest user?

Sorry for so many questions - but there are so many possibles!

[dodgyshirt]

If your son has installed XP as a cmpletely fresh install rather than an upgrade or repair, then everything will have disappeared. Disk space is obviously used by Windoze itself and the files will have been deleted by the formatting prior to install.
Your only hope is to install a file recovery programme which may be able to retrieve the missing files.
I should warn you though that , depending upon the software you choose, this could take weeks of continual running.

[vehelpfulguy]

As dodgyshirt says, if a brand new Windows install is done this includes a hard disk format.

A hard disk format deletes EVERYTHING off the disk to make it a clean install ready for Windows.

If this has been done then you need to renstall all your programmes.

You may well have lost all your music and photos.

As dodgyshirt mentions, there are some types of Windows installs that DONT do a format, they just re-install Windows in place (overwrite existing Windows files), and this should have kept all your photos and music.

In future (bit late now) DONT do a re-install of Windows, it may well be that the hard disk was loose or something as simple as that.

As you have found out, a Windows re-install can be a drastic step.

[Paulst30]

Sound like he upgraded to xp and kept the NTFS partition, rather than creating a new one.

If you created a new login name then your old stuff should be in

C:/Documents and Settings *persons name* MyDocuments.

Happened to me a few years ago but i managed to retrieve my stuff.

[raysparx1]

Thank you all, will try all your suggestions, I should have saved my pictures to disc, but I never, I have learnt a harsh lesson with this,luckily I had saved my work to a memory stick, will let you know if I have any luck, thanks again all, Ray

[abranei]

Formatting does not complete wipe your hard drive from a technical point. It simply flags the space for overwrite.

Only formatting using the likes of the Gutman tehnology will truely wipe you drive clean.

Unfortunately installing XP will have overwritten the old data but if may be possible to recover some of your files via professional datarecovery services from www.ontrack.co.uk

If this happens again pull the power (Never shutdown as windows will write to the hard drive potentially writing over you data) and then send to ontract who can scan your drive to see if some of the files are recoverable.

Not cheap but if you photos are priceless then this is one possible way to recover your files.