Systom recovery/getting backup files back

A bit of history. Last week I used crap cleaner and did not back-up (my bad). I lost my profile (desk top, files, etc) but my wife's was still there. After the clean-up I wanted to defrag, but could not; seemed that some of my registry files were now missing. I bought registry software to get things rolling. It recognized a bunch of troubles, but was still unable to defrag, etc.

A couple days later I attempted a search for my my files, but it would not work. The search screen would come up for a couple milliseconds and then gone. This also behaved this way on my wife's "side" of the computer.

I put my Gateway system recovery disk in and let it create a back-up file. Now that everything is starting over, I would like to have all my files back as well as programs. I can do a search for them and they show-up, but they are protected and won't run. Any suggestions on the direction I should go with this to get things back to normal?

I have windows XP

Thanks from the new guy