Retrieve files after reformat

Hello I was wondering if there is anyway to retrieve files after a reformat?

 

oh god this all happened when one night I turned my computer off. Then the next morning I turn it on and get this

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt
<windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
please reinstall a copy of the above file

I did not get a windows xp disc with my pc. I was going to get one today but my little brother went onto my computer and reformatted it sigh I lost 5 years worth sigh:cry Now I am wondering what caused this? Also when I was trying to install avg the windows root thing came up here. http://img249.imageshack.us/my.php?image=windowsrooterrorcs5.png

Looks like it came back to haunt me sigh.

 

I don't know if the same applies to computer hard disks, but we were able to recover photos off an accidentally formatted compact flash memory card using Undelete Plus.

Also, you might not want to install anything in the reformatted hard drive since it may overwrite whatever precious data may still be in there.

Good luck with the data recovery, hellzscream.

 

WOW! Not to rub salt in to your wounds, but this is why we STRONGLY recommend that people back up anything they don't want to lose. Yeah, there's a million reasons why we don't make backups, from "I don't get viruses" to "my PC always runs great and I never have problems" to "making back ups takes too much time" to "...burn a CD? How?". Well, I don't get virsues (well, I did once) and my PC does run perfectly all the time, but I still back up stuff. PCs are crazy creatures and can -at any time for no apparent reason- crash and do strange things and not boot and make your data inaccessible. This is why we back up the important stuff. But there's light, not much light, but there is light. As long as the amount of data written to the drive is MINIMAL, and the format was not a full format (most people are totally impatient, so a quick format was probably done), then you should be able to recover some of your stuff. The only freeware I know of that can recover stuff from a formatted drive is PCInspector. It isn't very user friendly, but it works. For best results: Take the hard drive that you want to recover from and hook it up as a secondary drive (meaning, not the main C: drive) on a different PC; run PC Inspector and save the data to a drive that is NOT your drive -OR- hook up a second drive to your PC and install Windows to it, and use it as drive C: and use the drive you want to recover from as drive D: or E: and when data is recovered, save it to C: and not to your drive -OR- get an external storage device like a USB drive or thumb drive and use it to store your recovered data, but this is the least desirable scenario. The idea is that you do not want to write any more data to the drive you want to recover. When data is written to it, it will over-write any previously written data and will destroy it forever. When data is deleted or a drive is quick formatted, the data is not actually "erased". What happens is that the 'headers' created by the file system (Windows) are changed. When a drive has data on it, the headers tell Windows "there is X amount of data on the next Y locations. Do NOT write any new data to these Y locations". A quick format (or emptying the Recycle Bin) only changes the main headers so they say "the following Y locations do not contain any data" so Windows "thinks" that the drive is empty, but all the data is actually still there. So the idea is to not write any new data to the drive.
Good luck!!!!

(if you feel that the data is worth paying for, check your local independent PC repair shops; they should be able to help. Also, many commercial data recovery companies offer a "no data- no charge" policy but if they do recover usable data it won't be cheap. There are many paid data recovery programs that have demo modes: when you run 'em they show you the data that can be recovered, but don't actually recover it until you pay for the software. That way you can see if the data is actually able to be saved before you shell out your $$$. You can check some out in the Major Geeks Data Recovery download section)