Mamapajama
Senior member
A friend of mine just reinstalled WinXP (NTFS) into his computer over the same partition (for a reason I can't remember).. but here's the problem:
(by the way, he's using a WD 120gb HD).
He saved all of his critical files onto his desktop, and when he finished reinstalling windows, his previous desktop settings obviously disappeared because the new installation replaced it; he tried going into his desktop folder, but there was nothing in there except files and folders of the new setting. The weird thing is, windows tells him that he has 70gb of free space left, which makes sense if the old files are still there; but when he browses through anywhere in windows and DOS, those files "don't exist." Furthermore, he tried running checkdisk, and sure enough, it indicates that there are ~18000 files that were chekced during the test as opposed to the expected number of files contained in a computer that has nothing but a fresh copy of windows in it - BUT HE'S TRIED EVERYTHING TO ACCESS THOSE FILES AND CAN'T GET TO THEM - I suppose that indicates that those files have not been erased, but I couldn't figure out why they are completely inaccessible - DOS says that these files "don't exist." He's tried running all kinds of data recovery software, and they also indicate that these files are in his HD and that there were no lost files to recover, but it said that the directory needed to be recovered (which he did, but the files were still inaccessible).
Is there anything this dude can do to recover his files? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
(by the way, he's using a WD 120gb HD).
He saved all of his critical files onto his desktop, and when he finished reinstalling windows, his previous desktop settings obviously disappeared because the new installation replaced it; he tried going into his desktop folder, but there was nothing in there except files and folders of the new setting. The weird thing is, windows tells him that he has 70gb of free space left, which makes sense if the old files are still there; but when he browses through anywhere in windows and DOS, those files "don't exist." Furthermore, he tried running checkdisk, and sure enough, it indicates that there are ~18000 files that were chekced during the test as opposed to the expected number of files contained in a computer that has nothing but a fresh copy of windows in it - BUT HE'S TRIED EVERYTHING TO ACCESS THOSE FILES AND CAN'T GET TO THEM - I suppose that indicates that those files have not been erased, but I couldn't figure out why they are completely inaccessible - DOS says that these files "don't exist." He's tried running all kinds of data recovery software, and they also indicate that these files are in his HD and that there were no lost files to recover, but it said that the directory needed to be recovered (which he did, but the files were still inaccessible).
Is there anything this dude can do to recover his files? Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
