Recover Data from Win7 reinstall/repartioned drive

Hi guys,

BACKGROUND: First off, we are not idiots! But W7 has made us feel like we are! Our teenage daughter got an HP/Compaq Presario for Christmas with Windows 7. It crashed and Windows refused to boot in any mode.

We went through the system restore which kept failing. Safemode would not boot. Nothing we tried would bring Windows up.

In the end, we went through some options for recovery; it gave us an option to back-up data (35GB!!) - so we clicked 'cancel' meaning to cancel the whole restore operation. However, this is not what it meant! It canceled the back-up part and carried on with the restore; repartitioning the drive and reinstalling Windows!

We are now able to get into Windows, like it was on day one.

The question is - can we recover the data after the re-partition?

I have looked at some recovery software, and they all say not to install on the DRIVE the data is to be recovered from. Looking at the laptop drive, it is partitioned into C and D drives;

C drive has Windows install (with empty My Documents etc)
D drive (RECOVERY) has 2GB free of 15GB.

So what are our options here?

Can I install a recovery software like Minitool onto the D Drive to look at recovering data files from C?

Should I return it to the shop (Tesco) to recover the data as it is less than 2 months into use?

At the moment the laptop is ready to use but we are not using it in case there is a chance of recovering the data (we can loose all the media files fine tough luck) but she spent ages working on her CV and it took us ages to get her motivated to do it in the first place grrr arrrg!!

Your help/advice/support is as ever appreciated!!