Reinstalled Vista wiped harddrive

Lovecook · 12-20-2008, 05:41 AM

Hello. Just a warning, i am not at all good with computers.

Recently i was trying to help my brother try to find an activation key for Vista Home Premium 32bit (the same as mine), because he had lost it. So i tried to download one online, and suceeded, however, it 'formatted' my computer. Now whenever i turn it on, it says on a black screen "bootmgr compression fail" or something to that effect. So i found the Vista disk and in the bios (?) screen i chose to boot from cd. That all worked, and i reinstalled Vista to the instructions i found online.

But now all my files, programs, customised skins and themes have all disappeared.

We have tried system restore, but of course there's no restore point. I did try to back-up my entire hard drive but that failed. So i come asking if you know how i can get all of my files etc. back, and what is the best way to do so. Even if that is taking it to a shop and paying some outrageous amount.

Thanks very much.

joeten · 12-20-2008, 02:36 PM

there is lots of software to retrieve files from a had drive but unless you know what your doing i would advise the shop for the files, you can always download the other stuff

12-20-2008, 05:41 AM	#1 (permalink)
Lovecook Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 1 OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit	Reinstalled Vista wiped harddrive Hello. Just a warning, i am not at all good with computers. Recently i was trying to help my brother try to find an activation key for Vista Home Premium 32bit (the same as mine), because he had lost it. So i tried to download one online, and suceeded, however, it 'formatted' my computer. Now whenever i turn it on, it says on a black screen "bootmgr compression fail" or something to that effect. So i found the Vista disk and in the bios (?) screen i chose to boot from cd. That all worked, and i reinstalled Vista to the instructions i found online. But now all my files, programs, customised skins and themes have all disappeared. We have tried system restore, but of course there's no restore point. I did try to back-up my entire hard drive but that failed. So i come asking if you know how i can get all of my files etc. back, and what is the best way to do so. Even if that is taking it to a shop and paying some outrageous amount. Thanks very much.

12-20-2008, 02:36 PM	#2 (permalink)
joeten Tech Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 3,146 OS: vista	Re: Reinstalled Vista wiped harddrive there is lots of software to retrieve files from a had drive but unless you know what your doing i would advise the shop for the files, you can always download the other stuff