Dear fellows,

Our company upgraded the operating system from Vista Business to Vista
Enterprise, during the installation process, no update can be selected, so I
select new installation, but all the previous files such as user profile (the
docunments, desktop files) are missing! As those files are very important,
and I searched for many solution, I found out that my harddrive doesn't had
the directory "windows.old", all things gone! Besides using recovery
software, what else can I try for?

Frank wrote:

Dear fellows,

Our company upgraded the operating system from Vista Business to Vista
Enterprise, during the installation process, no update can be selected, so
I select new installation, but all the previous files such as user profile
(the docunments, desktop files) are missing! As those files are very
important, and I searched for many solution, I found out that my harddrive
doesn't had the directory "windows.old", all things gone! Besides using
recovery software, what else can I try for?

Restore data from backups. If you really don't have a company backup
strategy, then create and implement one.

In the meantime, you must stop using that machine immediately and either try
and retrieve the data with data recovery software or send the drive to a
professional data recovery company. See general data recovery information
below.

If the data is crucial and price is not a factor, send the drive to a
professional data recovery company like Drive Savers (my preference) or
Seagate Data Recovery. General prices run from $500USD on up. Drive Savers
recovered all the data on a failed laptop drive for one of my clients and
it cost $2,700. He thought it was worth the money; only you know what your
data is worth. I understand that some insurance companies are now covering
data recovery charges so check with yours.

Drive Savers - http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services - https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/

*IMPORTANT* - If you think the drive is physically healthy, it may be
possible to retrieve the data by software methods. DO NOTHING FURTHER ON
THE DRIVE. The data is still on the hard drive but if you overwrite it, it
will be extremely difficult or impossible to recover it. If you use data
recovery software, install it on another machine and either use it from
that operating system or create a bootable cd/floppy and work with that. If
you don't have the skill and/or equipment to do these procedures and the
data is crucial, take the machine to a professional computer repair shop
that has experience in doing data recovery. This will not be your local
version of BigStoreUSA. In-shop data recovery is usually not exactly cheap
(for ex., my charges are generally $150-350USD), but it normally costs less
than sending the drive to a company like Drive Savers. You need to make the
determination of the value of your data and decide what to do.

http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html
PCInspector File Recovery -
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/welcome.htm
Executive Software ?Undelete? -
http://www.undelete.com/undelete/undelete.asp
R-Studio - http://www.r-tt.com/
File Scavenger - http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm
Ontrack's EasyRecovery - http://www.ontrack.com/software/

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ