Please help me find my desktop

[Toadly]

Okay here is what happened;
Ran Scandisk and Disk Defrag in safe mode on my Gateway PC running Windows ME.
Both completed successfully but the display was stuck at 800X600 when it completed. I tried to set it to a more optimal setting but each time I rebooted it would return to 800x600. Way too large!
So I used the Go Back feature to go back to before the Scandisk and disk defrag was done, two days ago.
When that completed, I couldn't get Windows to come up. I did see a message that indicated that Windows needed to be reinstalled so I used the Gateway Restoration disks 1-3 to reload windows.
Now I have a brand new installation of Windows ME and that is NOT what I wanted.
How do I get my old desktop back?
Please help

[glc]

You don't. Running the restoration discs wiped your hard drive and reinstalled everything back to the way that the computer came from the factory. You are going to have to recreate everything you have done since you got the computer.

[GaryRouth]

. . . if you have backups of your personal data, scan for viruses/spyware before putting anything back in the fresh install. It might be a little more work, but with a decent set of backups and a bit of work, you should be able to get things back to your accustomed setup.

On a Gateway, GoBack is the "non-destructive" system restore tool. The Restoration Disk set does what glc mentioned: reformats and recreates the original disk image of your installation when factory-fresh.

Were you seeing any error messages of increasing frequency just before you had trouble with ScanDisk and DeFrag? If so, and if similiar messages start popping up again even with your fresh disk image, you may want to test the memory and hard drive (memory with MemTest86+ at http://www.memtest.org, hard disk with diagnostics from the manufacturer's website).

. . . Gary

[P.S. ... noticed that this is your first post here: Welcome to the PC Mechanic forums! ]

[Toadly]

What about those sites that say that they can retrieve information from damaged, reformatted, etc, hard drives? Has anybody has any experience with this typw of data retrieval?
Does anybody know if these are effective?

Thanks

[rjfvillarosa]

I have the programs for data retrieval, but to be honest I have never used them, they were given to me and highly recomended but like I say I have no personal use knowledge of them.

They are made by Runtime Software and the software when installed has two options "GetDataBack for FAT32" and "GetDataBack for NTFS".
BTW welcome to PCMech and enjoy your stay.

[GaryRouth]

Toadly - Data Recovery in your situation would be pretty tricky: you've not only reformatted, but repartitioned and reformatted - and then overwritten much of the disk space with the image on the Recovery Disk. For Data Recovery to work, the data can't have been overwritten yet.

Did you not have any backups at all?

I suppose you could try some of the freeware/shareware Recovery tools (rjfvillarosa mentions GetDataBack) [you can check at download.com] - the full retail tools are fairly pricey. And any tool will only work if the data is on a portion of the drive that hasn't already been overwritten. The other thing to know is that these programs can run for a long, long time trying to recover files (not unheard of to run for a full day!).
. . . Gary

[Toadly]

No...I don't have any backups. Big Mistake...I know...Doh!
Sure would be nice to be able to verify that the disk indeed was overwritten when I used those three Gateway restortion disks.
I think I may have to take the loss and learn from the experience.

Thanks for all the help and input,

Toad

[rjfvillarosa]

Toadly. most of the format's I have seen break whatever is on the disk down into 16kb bieces, if you have formatted over a format, I think you are wasting your time my friend, its quite likely you have broken 16kb pieces into even stranger 16kb pieces

[GaryRouth]

Well, if you had a Lot of data, and your Recovery set only used the outer-most portions of your hard drive, then the data on your mid-and-inner portions might be recoverable. Why not give VirtualLab's Data Recovery tool a try, it gives you a preview of what it finds, and allows you to try a small sample recovery (like a one-megabyte document or text file) to prove it works. The full version is somewhere around $70. GetDataBack is about the same price.

I've put links below. The first is the results for a search in the Utilities section for "Data Recovery", the second is the link for VirtualLabs tool, the third is for GetDataBack. I think you'll get a good idea of your chances by reading some of the user reviews. One thing: most of these tools need to be installed on a separate hard drive (in other words - Not on the drive needing recovery).

http://www.download.com/3120-20-0.ht...=17&search.y=4
http://www.download.com/VirtualLab-D...-10254291.html
http://www.download.com/GetDataBack-...-10294180.html

Best of luck!
. . . Gary