Recover documents and photos

[Guest]

My dad has somehow lost all of his Word and Excel documents and all photos
while trying to install Earthlink as his new ISP. He cannot tell me what he
did, but it appears that Windows XP was re-installed. I used the recover
function and was able to restore the computer to a time prior to the
Earthlink install, and while it brings his desktop back to what it used to
look like, the files are still gone. Any hope?

Thanks

 

[Guest]

Have you done a Search for them? All you need is a single word in any of
the titles of the photos. Search the entire harddrive (probably "C" drive).
If you find one of them, then rightclick it and click Properties. There you
can look at the Location and it will show you where it is now.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

My dad has somehow lost all of his Word and Excel documents and
all
photos while trying to install Earthlink as his new ISP. He
cannot
tell me what he did, but it appears that Windows XP was
re-installed.
I used the recover function and was able to restore the
computer to a
time prior to the Earthlink install, and while it brings his
desktop
back to what it used to look like, the files are still gone.
Any hope?

When you say "recover function," I assume you mean the "System
Restore" feature. Sorry, but System Restore restores just the
system, and does nothing for data files.

If he reinstalled Windows cleanly, he's out of luck short of
trying a data recovery service. This kind of service is very
expensive, and may or may not work in his case. Unless these are
extremely important files, with high monetary file in recovering
them, I wouldn't even try this.