Vista Crashed and can't get it

[Guest]

I have a two week old laptop (Lenovo) It had Vista on it and it crashed. I
had very important pictures and documents on it. When I tried to turn it on,
it just kept restarting. Finally, it brought a complete new version of Vista
and I lost everything from the other one. I tried to system restore but it
said there was no point to go back to. How can that be. I did go in to
"search" and found the files I am discussing but I can not get it to go back
to that user to get all my downloads, pictures, memos and softwear. PLEASE
HELP!

 

[dean-dean]

If you are talking about the your documents and pictures in the Windows.old
folder, you will have to manually move them to your new folders under
C:\Users\(Your Name). See:

How to retrieve files from an earlier version of Windows in Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933209/

In your case, substitute "Documents and Settings" with
"C:\Windows.old\Users\(Your Name):

How to restore your personal files after you perform a custom installation
of Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932912/

Do this last, after you are completely sure you have retrieved your
personal files:

How to remove the Windows.old folder that is generated when you perform a
custom installation of Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933212

Depending on how you installed Vista, this may also be relevant:

Some files may appear to be missing after you upgrade an earlier version of
Windows to Windows Vista
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930890/en-us

 

[Guest]

I have a lot of other programs on the other user name but the system restore
will not let me restore to a date other than right now. i want to restore to
last Friday9/07 at noon. I need all those other programs as well.

 

[peter]

You are running under a different installation of Vista......the previous
installation was moved to ***.old and all of the restore points from that
installation are gone.
Any files/pics/etc that you had are still there under ***.old directory..you
just need to find them and move them to your new installation.as explained
by dean-dean.
Once you have that sorted out you can then delete that ***.old directory.
What you should have is read the manual on how to perform a "recovery"
Chances are that Lenovo gave you a recovery partition on your system with
the option to use that partition by means of an F something push during
boot.This would have repaired your Vista install..............isn't
hindsight great??

peter