First off, minor note on the terminology. There's no such thing as a destructive reboot. You formatted your system.
As for your problem, there's absolutely no chance of a full recovery at this point, and the more you use the system, the less chance of a partial recovery you have.
Long story short, the data's gone. You might have a chance at saving some random files, but there's no way to predict which files. It's not like you can choose between saving your email messages or some word processing documents you were working on.
What you can do, is learn from this experience the value of regular backups. You never know when some kind of catastrophic failure may occur, so it's ALWAYS a good idea to keep regular backups of things you don't want to lose. For all you know, a major power spike could come down the line tomorrow and fry your hard drive, and you'd lose everything again. The unfortunate reality, is it takes some sort of painful experience like this to really drive the point home about backups. So, you may not be able to do anything about the files you lost this time around, but you can make sure that should the unthinkable happen again, you're prepared.
I am in dire straits. To make a long painful story short, I was told to do a destructive reboot through Windows XP to remove some viruses on my system. The idiots at my local repair shop told me that this would restore Windows XP to its original working state. They FAILED to mention that this would also wipe out all of my data files, e-mail etc etc so I have lost everything. Had I been told beforehand that everything would get wiped out I would have backed up my stuff, but no such luck. Is there any way at all that I can recover my lost data? Are there any recovery programs I could buy that might be of help? Any information anyone can provide will be greatly greatly appreciated. Thanks so very much.
Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic