Lost it all.. back to factory settings..

I spilled a little wine last night, close to my laptop (.. and no, I hadn't had that much.. tho I wish I had it may have made this all worth it!) , anyway, there was not much in the glass to spill and it didn't appear to have tuched the laptop. However, I must have been wrong because 5 minutes later the keyboard stopped working.. and though I still had mouse control it wasn't much use on its own so decided to power down.

Anyway, before I got a chance to do this the laptop let out a series of little beeps.. I quickly pulled the power and removed the battery, thinking then about the wine, and left it for 24 hours

I reconnected it all tonight and it appears to be back to factory settings.
Start menu is as it was when it arrived, my spybot, avg.. my documents, music, the lot.... all gone.

I went to the restore function and it only has the one for today! so no history whatsoever.. having said that the laptop appears to be working ok.. tho I will need to reload all the anti-this and that.. before I do anything and it is currently offline.. (I am on my old PC.. phew!! good to have a reserve!)

Now I have a backup which is about 6 weeks old, so I am not completely desperate, but there were some things like recent photos which cannot be replaced and I wondered if there is any hope of getting anything back.

I doubt it.. but I'd kick myself if I never asked.

 

I would think it's pretty unlikely, but the best search tool available that I know of is Everything. Just the file extension (.jpg or whatever) should be sufficient a search term.

http://www.voidtools.com/

If that doesn't produce anything wait for other suggestions, as there are other tools you could try.

Thanks for the wine tip btw, no more messing about with recovery disks

 

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If you're thinking that the files are still on your drive, there are several good recovery tools available, many of them free: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?id=38&sort=7 ...

Be advised: most of these apps work best when used as quickly as possible, as Windows tends to overwrite disk areas...and, if a format was involved during the restore process, your chances of recovery are slim indeed...

There are also dedicated labs that specialize in data recovery - Ontrack comes highly recommended: http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/ ...they can recover virtually any data by disassembling the hard drive to platter level, but at a steep price...

Good luck!

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Before you keep turning the laptop on, you should really take it apart and get rid of whatever wine is inside because it is sticky (fermented grape juice) and will probably cause problems. You would use either distilled water or alcohol on foam sticks. Foam sticks are a lot like cotton swabs but safer in electronic gear because the cotton could break off but the foam will not.
I'm not sure what the proper name is for the sticks. I have a pack I bought at my electronics supply store. They look a lot like eye shadow applicators but have much longer sticks. I simply use them dry or moisten slightly by dipping into distilled water or alcohol to remove residue.