System Restore problem -- no "Undo Last Restoration" button

Hello, I've got a bit of a problem. I see a lot of guides that say you can undo your last system restore by clicking an option in the System Restore window that says something along the lines of "Undo Last System Restoration" (note that this is *not* Rollback to Last Restore Point) but I don't have that. I've only got two options-- Create a New Restore Point and Restore to Last Point.

I'm not interested in System Restore Points, I'm trying to undo an accidental hard drive wipe (which, ironically did the opposite of what I intended it to do. It deleted all of my important photos and documents while leaving all the installed programs I wanted gone... yeah, jokes on me, huh?) and I've already tried programs like Undelete and Pandora to little success.

I'm considering going to a professional, but I'm not too happy about shelling out upwards of $300 (the price my sister in law paid to have her documents restored after a hard drive failure) if its something I could do by myself with someone's help.

I'm guessing that my version of Windows XP Home is older than the versions that include 3 options in the System Restore menu, but here's hoping I've still got some hope. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

 

Are the restore points available when you check in "Restore my computer to an earlier time"??? You may have purged your restore points..
Restoring to an earlier point will not, undo the wipe and recover your data.
For that wait for more replies from the Geeks

 

Yeah, I don't have any restore points to revert to either, which makes me think that the restore points were purged also. But it makes no sense since my installed programs are there too (like the ones that did not come with my computer, stuff I downloaded later, example being Getright, Half Life, etc.). Incomplete wipe maybe?

 

You should have used Add/Remove from control panel to remove the programs..Why wipe the disk??

 

Here's a link on recovering stuff. http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=165064&highlight=photo+recovery

If you search you will find plenty of threads for the same on MG. Cheers

 

Consider it a rollback. A very large rollback.