XP wrote over My Documents

[Guest]

Had a major disaster today. I was installing a new HP printer. WindowsXP
Home crashed and went into a mode where it booted up with a sign on screen
for Administrator and would not let me in, announcing "limited user rights".
Only option offered was "Shut Down Computer". Mind you this is a single user
machine used at home, no other users. So I decided to reinstall Windows,
thinking it would do just that but leave data intact. Windows installed just
fine and I knew I would need to reinstall all apps to re-set them in the
Registry, BUT doing this wrote over my MyDocuments folders. Guess where all
of my important stuff was located...

Anyone know if there is a way to restore this information? All of the My
Documents folders are now cleaned out to default sample files and no more.
WTF is this about, when Microsoft recommends that this is where you should
store your docs?

Any help MUCH appreciated.

 

[Rich Barry]

Adam, if you did a clean install then you are shit out of luck. If you
did a repair or parallel install then they should be in
the Documents and Settings folder under Windows old or Windows2 A
clean install would format the drive and start
fresh.

 

[D.Currie]

Had a major disaster today. I was installing a new HP printer. WindowsXP
Home crashed and went into a mode where it booted up with a sign on screen
for Administrator and would not let me in, announcing "limited user
rights".
Only option offered was "Shut Down Computer". Mind you this is a single
user
machine used at home, no other users. So I decided to reinstall Windows,
thinking it would do just that but leave data intact. Windows installed
just
fine and I knew I would need to reinstall all apps to re-set them in the
Registry, BUT doing this wrote over my MyDocuments folders. Guess where
all
of my important stuff was located...

Anyone know if there is a way to restore this information? All of the My
Documents folders are now cleaned out to default sample files and no more.
WTF is this about, when Microsoft recommends that this is where you should
store your docs?

Any help MUCH appreciated.

There are several ways to reinstall Windows, and it sounds like you chose
the wrong way. If you had done a repair install, you wouldn't have had to
reinstall programs, and your data would have still been there. If you wiped
the drive, NONE of the directories are safe.

There's a slim chance your data may exist; do a search for one of the file
names and see if it appears.

If that doesn't work, your only chance is by using data recovery software or
taking the drive somewhere that has that type of software available.

Keep in mind that everything you do with the computer runs the risk of
destroying the data that you're trying to recover, so even the act of
installing the data recovery software can scramble the data even more. So
can surfing the internet, which writes temporary files to the drive.