Too often in the heat of the moment folk will reinstall the OS in hopes of bringing the machine back and in the process wipe out their files.
Read the CNET Storage Forum top post (lost and found) to see what other titles to try.
Bob
A friend's computer completely died, she does not want to fix it as she has new one, but needs data from the hard drive. I hooked it up to both both my laptop and my desktop using hard drive dock, it recognizes the drive, but i see only windows files on it, does that mean the info on it is gone otherwise? When i say info i mean her pictures, thats what she wanted me to help her save.

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