My sister is in China, a few hours from Wuhan. Only two westerners in
town. XP kept crashing. The local guru 'fixed' it for her - told her it
was an incompatibility problem with her anti-virus software. Anyway,
now all she can see are previous owner's files, no apparent access to
her own files. She has no Chinese, he doesn't speak English. She had no
backups (impossible to get disks in town). She would like to ask him to
'undo' what he did so that she can at least backup up her files - then
pursue the XP crash problem further. She needs an XP-savvy
Chinese/English speaker to assist.
Can anyone help?

If you had set the "system restore" point, then you could "undo" to early
point.
Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Restore

Follow the instruction to restore the date/time you want.

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> My sister is in China, a few hours from Wuhan. Only two westerners in
> town. XP kept crashing. The local guru 'fixed' it for her - told her it
> was an incompatibility problem with her anti-virus software. Anyway,
> now all she can see are previous owner's files, no apparent access to
> her own files. She has no Chinese, he doesn't speak English. She had no
> backups (impossible to get disks in town). She would like to ask him to
> 'undo' what he did so that she can at least backup up her files - then
> pursue the XP crash problem further. She needs an XP-savvy
> Chinese/English speaker to assist.
> Can anyone help?
>

System restore only goes back to a date/time after the 'guru' updated
her anti-virus software. Also, my understanding is that system restore
does not restore any user files and that is what she is trying to
recover.
Yes, of course she should have had backups, didn't find out until she
got there that she can not get disks. This is rural China, three hours
from the nearest sizable city (Wuhan, not a city full of westerners)
and there's also a language barrier.
Thanks for advice anyway, we need all the help we can get!