comp had error, reinstalled itself, a lot of things lost - help!

[Guest]

I started my computer this morning only for it to have a black error screen
talking of some system error or another. It told me to type in 'r' to sort it
out, so I did, and after 20+ minutes of it repairing itself, I realised it
was actually reinstalling itself entirely, to the point that, when it was
done, it was greeting me as though it were a new computer, asking for basic
information and whatnot.

When it finally logged in to a generic 'hp_owner' name (that was not the
desktop I'd left it as), all the old programs I had previously installed were
still there, but everything else I had stored and saved on that username were
lost- such as Word files, music files, the lot.

I'm just absolutely bothered to hell about it... It's my last day of college
today and I can't believe it would happen now- especially since my computer
gave no sign of having a problem when I switched it off last night, and now
it's acting as though it's brand-bloody-new, except it still has the old
programs.

There's also no system-restore points left at all.

ANY help would be absolutely wonderful.

 

[Malke]

I started my computer this morning only for it to have a black error
screen talking of some system error or another. It told me to type in
'r' to sort it out, so I did, and after 20+ minutes of it repairing
itself, I realised it was actually reinstalling itself entirely, to
the point that, when it was done, it was greeting me as though it were
a new computer, asking for basic information and whatnot.

When it finally logged in to a generic 'hp_owner' name (that was not
the desktop I'd left it as), all the old programs I had previously
installed were still there, but everything else I had stored and saved
on that username were lost- such as Word files, music files, the lot.

I'm just absolutely bothered to hell about it... It's my last day of
college today and I can't believe it would happen now- especially
since my computer gave no sign of having a problem when I switched it
off last night, and now it's acting as though it's brand-bloody-new,
except it still has the old programs.

There's also no system-restore points left at all.

ANY help would be absolutely wonderful.

It sounds like you just clicked away without really reading what was
happening because apparently you did a Repair Install. It's really hard
to do this inadvertently. There is also no way for us to know what
caused the machine to have the problem at this point. A "black error
screen talking of some system error or another" doesn't give us any
useful information for diagnosis.

Take the machine to a professional computer repair shop. If you had data
that you forgot to back up, choose a shop that does data recovery. They
can also test the machine to find out why the issue occurred. I'm not
saying this to hurt your feelings; just being practical.

Malke