Accessing old files after an OS reinstallation?

[Pretorius]

Something happened to my dad's computer this afternoon. I'm not sure what exactly, he was pretty clueless, something about a program opening up by itself and deleting a load of system files. He called the helpline before I went to work, and when I came home he'd reinstalled Windows.

I had some important documents on that computer. Is there any way to get them back or are they gone forever?

Don't make me cry, guys.

 

[PC eye]

Active Undelete and other data recovery programs would be the first thought there. http://www.active-undelete.com/index2.html?OVRAW=data%20recovery%20tools&OVKEY=data%20recovery%20tool&OVMTC=standard&OVADID=1788055522&OVKWID=15830744022

 

[Pretorius]

Thanks! I've been able to recover the document I was looking for, but when I open it it's all gibberish symbols.

This is an essay I spent about six hours writing a few days ago. Do you know what the problem might be?

 

[PC eye]

The only thing would be simply trying to grab a better copy by running the retrieval a few times to see if you recover more of it intact or try a different program to see if another sees better results. There are a long list of freeware sites often including one or more data recovery and backup programs for upto XP or some for all versions like the one at http://www.freewr.com/system-utilities/backup-data-recovery.php

 

[PC_Techie]

For the symbols when opening the document, make sure you are using the same program you used to type the document. Like if you typed it in Microsoft Word 2002 make sure you are using Microsoft Word 2002 to open it.