Computer has lost everything HELP!!!

stonecoldsteveaustin

Hello
Can anyone out there help please.
My computer crashed last night, and all of a sudden it has reverted back to when it was first bought i.e 3 years ago. so needless to say, I have lost everything. it has windows xp home edition and I am pulling my hair out, I've lost emails, photos, music etc etc can anyone suggest anything or is there any way of retreving any files. any help is most appreciated.

westie666

stonecoldsteveaustin,

I have used a program in the past called GetDataBack.
Even if your conputer has been formatted, it can still work away and find all the information that was on the machine before.

I found the best way to do this is to plug your own hard drive into another machine, and use the program from their. It will not work on the computer that you are trying to get the data off.

Rgds
W666

imho

Sounds like you had/got a virus as well.You need to get better antivirus and frirewall.

westie666.Is right,there are programs that can get your data back,Look at what they got from Gary Glittters computer! look in Google for data recovery

sambessey

Use the affected computer as little as possible until you run some data recovery; the more you use it, the more likely you are to wipe out stuff you want to save, as Windows will start writing files all over the space containing your old stuff.

stonecoldsteveaustin

Thanks All

Woby_Tide

you say that it has reverted back to how it was 3 years ago, if there was a hard drive problem it would be very rare(nigh on impossible) to lose all personal data but retain just the operating system. Is the disc partitioned at all? Is Windows still operating? Have you used a recovery disc?

albertross_2

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
http://www.free-av.com/antivirclassic/avira_unerase.html
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/welcome.htm
http://www.partition-recovery.com/
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/Linux_Recovery.shtml
http://www.fdrlab.com/software/tfu.html

http://www.finaldata.com/sub_products/products_1.asp
http://www.restorer2000.com/

cwoodham

When you right click on Start and open Explore do you just see the Windows folder or are your other data and programs folders showing there? If there not showing they have been either accidentally deleted or perhaps a virus has removed them.

As sambessey says don't load data recovery programs on this drive as you will overwrite your data. And try to stop using the computer even for internet access as the temp internet files will overwrite data as well.

As westie666 says take out the drive and put it into another machine and if you still cant see the data and program files, use data recovery tools loaded on this machine to recover data on your drive.

stonecoldsteveaustin

I did not use a recovery disk, it just has the original start page with 3 icons on it recycle bin , internet explorer and msn windows (I don't know what partitioned means?)

stonecoldsteveaustin

Thanks cwood, there are no old files or folders when I do explore

rjm2k1

You can't suddenly be back 3 years after a crash, there could be a number of things,
1. You may be logged in as administrator or some other account which doesn't have your files, try logging out and making sure you use the correct account.

2. You may have created a new account somehow and are now looking at this account rather than your previous one

3. you may have 2 hard drives or 2 partitions, an older one (3 years old stuff on it) and a newer one, the newer one may have died/been corrupted, causing the older one to start up instead

4. you may have selected an option to restore to factory defaults (this would have taken some time, maybe half an hour, so you would know it happened).

Don't rush into doing anything, someone I know did the same thing and re-installed windows, losing everything. If you have somehow reinstalled everything, I should point out that the more utilities etc that you download oneo that machine to fix the issue, the more likely it is that you will lose your data, use a different machine to download and then burn/run from cd if possible.