A year ago, staff member Broni was a complete and huge help with a virus problem.  Now my girlfriend has a lost OS.
she has a Hewlett Packard Pavilion a1023c Desktop computer from 2004. It came with XP, but she loaded her old windows 2000 into it in the beginning and has used that ever since. Today, she set up a new HP Officejet printer, incl running the starter Cd to install it. The next time she turned on the computer, she got a blue screen that gave her options of booting, recovery, or help. she chose Recovery. (Big mistake, i think) From then on, she has the original XP desktop screen and icons and files, as if starting out new - not even an ISP chosen yet.. There is no sign of all the settings and files and 2000 OS that she had! I came over and went to system restore and it only had one restore point, the download of the printer drivers today.. probably because it was the unused XP restore data. That didn't help.
SO HOW do we find her LOST 2000 operating system, files, and her whole life for the past 4 years? I'll bet there is an easy fix, but I can't find it.Depends on if she did a full restore or if it was just a install, either one though is going to be hard on the files she is missing.You may still recover most of your documents and other things stored in that folfer. It depends. First step is to take the HDD out of the computer and stop trying to recover things.
You need to slave it in another computer.
Next use a special forensic level recovery tool.
Not the common sort of thong.

Here is a phone number of a company in California.
1 800 882 8178
Here is another: 1  877-624-7206

The phone call is free. But do NOT make  any deal with anybody until you know your options.
re reply #2 from "geek"  -  wow, it's that difficult to retrieve?  just by clicking on "recovery" at the wrong time?
we don't have expertise to remove hard drives or use recovery tools that are not the usual "thong" ()   i guess we'll take the whole tower down to Office Depot or Best Buy computer help teams.Call the 800 numbers. Talk to SOMEBODY that does this for a living. It is very costly. That's what happens when backup is not a habit.

In Windows, restore and recovery and not the same as eternal media backup.not really so much you can try an use recuva but It's easier if you probably took it to a local repair shop.lovetodance
Please, disregard Geek-9pm's posts.
Simply because those services CHARGE hundreds of DOLLARS, and I don't think any private party has any data so precious.
What happened here, when your girlfriend used recovery option, the computer was reset to 2004 state.
Some existing data surely got overwritten, but some may still exist.
Recovery chances are slim, but why not to give it a shot, free shot...
The less you use that computer, the better, so no new files are written over the old ones.
Here: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/01/24/top-10-free-data-recovery-software/ is a whole bunch of free file recovery tools, you can try.
Start with Recuva.I see I was good to recommened it.Oh, OK, I didn't see it. Credits go to squall_01 some what and what do you mean by that?  I was just hoping that it wasnt one of those things that pushed to be a good program.  Like Vista.Broni, thanks for the guidance on this (and last year's very good/successful help for which i am forever grateful)
.  i understand the importance of not downloading the recovery software and the RECOVERED files onto the problem hard drive (because they might overwrite the "lost data") - BUT where do i download the recovery software (like Recuva) and then how do i apply it to the problem hard drive?  and  where/how do i put the recovered files?
I don't think, you're gonna do too much extra damage by installing just Recuva on the computer in question.
I'm not sure, if it's gonna run from USB stick, but you may give it a try. That would be the best option. Save recovered files on the same stick, on CD, DVD, external hard drive. Lot of choices. Quote

I don't think, you're gonna do too much extra damage by installing just Recuva on the computer in question.

They tell right up front not to install on the same media