computer crash

[Maxxuse]

My computer crashed and I had to format and lost everything. Is there any way
to retrieve my saved and unread mail and all of my contacts

 

[Doofy]

Nope, sorry. Chances are you lost everything....

 

[Dave]

Sure, from your backup.
What type of email account is it? Perhaps there's something on the server.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

If you have reformatted the drive then you have lost everything. If you had
enabled the option in Windows Mail to leave a copy of your mail on the
server then you would probably be able to access your emails that way, but
as the default option is disabled this is highly unlikely. Alternatively, if
you have a backup of your system you could retrieve your contacts from that
backup.

--

--
John Barnett MVP
Windows XP Associate Expert
Windows Desktop Experience

Web: http://www.winuser.co.uk
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[Patrick Keenan]

My computer crashed and I had to format and lost everything. Is there any
way
to retrieve my saved and unread mail and all of my contacts

If you formatted the drive, the data was overwritten, though *at the moment
of formatting*, data is often recoverable through various non-free means.
Non-free means that there's software that starts over $50 to professional
recovery services that start around $1000.

However, if you then re-install an OS on top of the bare, formatted drive
and proceed to use it, chances of recovery are close to zero, and the more
you use it, the closer it gets.

This won't help you now, but it's often possible to simply attach a
non-booting, crashed drive to another system and copy the files off prior to
fixing the crash.

And of course, this is an opportunity to review backup practices. Do back
up, but never to the same drive, never rely on only one copy, and do verify
that the backups actually work. It often isn't necessary to back up the
entire system.

Sorry there isn't better news.

HTH
-pk