am using compaq with 256 RAm and 40 GB and WINDOWS xp operating system, when booting my computer i recently got a message say my ntldr is missing and to restart i need to press ctr+alt+del, after doing that several times and no help i decisided to boot from the cd rom using a windows xp 2006 version, however the computer installed the windows 2006 version so on booting i could not get my data and other software packages i had installed ealry like norton, encarta, my music my document folder is empty while perivous it had all my research work, how can i retreive back this lost data and lost software? is it really lost or is there still hope of getting it back??? please Help *sigh.....
welcome to CH forum.

now, this happens alot, so in the future, before you use the windows cd, please make sure you know what you're about to do.

i suspect you re-installed windows, completely.

which is why you've lost data and software.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

TRY this.I have the same problem, ntldr not found..... If you turn your computer of and turn it back on real quick it just skips that screen for me.... dont ask me why lol TestDisk is a partition/ fat recovery TOOL. It may not be suited for data recovery after a clean install.
Chances are without paying big bucks to a data recovery service you won't see that data anytime soon...i'm not too sure about that.

i personally haven't tried testdisk to try and recover lost data.

however, i read in another post started by someone who had lost a whole BUNCH of photos after a re-format, that he USED testdisk and recovered 90% of the data free.

i'm not sure how reliable that info is, but apparently the other guy used it successfully.Are you sure that was the program being discussed ? ?.....yes. yes the guy definatley said he used testdisk. and recovered the files free.