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Hi all,
My sister had a virus on her computer and asked me to help, i wanted to boot the pc in safemode to get rid of the virus when i noticed "HP system recovery", I thought this was the option in windows to fully recover your pc to a backup made earlier in time, but apparently this option formats the hd and reinstalls windows :/
Is there an easy way i can recover the pc entirely?
The computer is a HP pavilion computer with windows xp
 

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if you have used the HP recovery section then basically it restores the pc to how it was when you bought it but may or may not have got rid of the virus. However you may have lost everything that is on there.

Unfortunately you will have to search for all the data that you had and see if it exsists but it is highly unlikely but you could try the following which you may want to print out as its quite long winded

Click START

Click MY Computer

Double click the main hard drive (C

Click DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS

--mouse over all the user in this folder, the one that shows empty, and once clicked on does not give you premission to open is the folder you want to use when completing the process. This should be the user (user name) you had before the restore, is may have a .PC(with numbers behind it)

--write down and remember this folder name


1. Shut down the computer.

2. Turn the power on, and when the blue HP or Compaq screen appears, press F8 to display the Windows Advanced Options Menu .

3.Use the arrow keys to move up to Safe Mode and press Enter .

4.Press Enter on Microsoft Windows Whistler Personal or Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition .

5.Click Administrator and, enter your password (if necessary) or press Enter .

6.A window will appear to prompt for confirmation to keep operating in Safe Mode .

7.Click Yes .

8.Click Start and My Computer . Then, double-click the main hard drive ( C: ) and Documents and Settings .

9.Right-click the folder name of the user account and click Properties . (This is the folder you found and wrote down before starting this process)

10.Click Security .

11.Click Advanced . On the Owner tab,(third tab over) click the checkbox to select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects option.

12. Click Apply .

13.Click Yes to the security message.

14.Click OK .

15.Click OK again.(you should start to see the files being transferred that your trying to access)

--Restart your computer in normal operation.

--Login to your user name

--make a new folder on your desktop and name it "BINGO", open that folder and create a folder named "FOUND IT"

click START

click MY COMPUTER

Double click the main hard drive (C

click DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS

--from here go to any user that does not contain adminstrator, or all users in the file name

(if you don't find the folder your looking for exit out of that user and choose another until you find the Folder)

--once you open each user

click DESKTOP

--look through the desktop folder, your looking for the folder BINGO open that and you should see the folder FOUND IT, this is the user that you want to copy all your lost files from the old user to.

--Wirte down this user name

Exit back to the DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS folder

--- at this point you should see all the users folders again, however when you click on the user folder you used the process on (the first folder you have written down) that folder will now open.

--From here you need to move your files back from (the first folder you have written down) to your currently operating user name (the second folder you have wirtten down)

--you should see all of your desktop, my music, my pics, my movies, (in the first folder you have written down) however until you move these files from the old user to your current user the computer will not always find them in your basic progams(ie.--windows movie maker, media player, ext.)

--with some of the folders it may be easier to move them first to a desktop folder and then reorganise them from there.

This should work you will get your lost docs. back however you may still need to reinstall some progams that you lost
 

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If the drive was formatted about the only option is to use recovery software, and copy the recovered files out to another media. There is no way to unformat a disk. Be aware the more you sue the drive before recovery, the more data you want to recover will be overwritten and unrecoverable. Do not install any programs to the disk, even the recovery software should be installed to another disk. You also cannot output to the same disk, or again, as you recover data you will overwrite other data you want. Programs will not run even if recovered, they will need to be reinstalled. You can try recuva, it will probably handle it so long as the drive is not used.
 
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