IT Queries: Computer problems answered

One of my kids has done a system recovery on the PC. We haven’t done a back up for some time. The last restore point is after the recovery. Is it possible to get info back from the hardrive?

This is one of the reasons we think system recovery disks are evil. It’s a cheap and nasty practice that causes problems like yours and we’d encourage consumers to avoid computers that don’t come with a proper operating system disk.

It is possible your data is still there. It depends on what the recovery disk did. Some will reformat the drive, while others will just overwrite the Windows and other critical folders but leave the data intact. Some give a choice of the two options.

If the drive has been reformatted, then there is little chance you’ll get the data back. However if only the Windows folder has been wiped then it’s quite likely the data is still there, just not visible.

In Windows XP, user data is saved in the C:\Documents and Settings folder and in Vista in the C:\users folder. In that folder you’ll find a number of sub-folders that contain the various user profiles and data.

Windows works hard to avoid overwriting these folders, for instance if Pete creates a new profile and Windows finds there’s already a Pete profile, it will name the new profile pete.000 to protect the data that might be in the pete folder.

To see if any might be the data you’ve lost, right click on the folder open Properties and look at the date the file was created or last modified. If either of these dates are before the recovery disk was run then you’ve probably found the profile.

Inside the profile you’ll find a Desktop, My Documents and other folders which will contain the users data.

It is possible to reset a stray profile so the computer looks the same as it did before the trouble, but this is something you would need to get a tech in to do.

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