All Created User Files Vanished!

[Happo]

P4 Notebook running XP SP2. Attempted to uninstall McAfee suite and install AVG.
All seemed well until the reboot after AVG installation, when it booted it kept starting the Office 2003 Installation Configuration, saying can't find file SKU112.cab. At this point the hard drive appeared almost empty, only system folders and a few select program folders remained.
Used system restore to revert back to before McAfee uninstallation, I have gone back as far as I can go. Most application files are now showing but there is nothing in My Documents, the company files for our accounting package are gone, my backup folders including registry backups are gone and probably more that I am yet to discover. There was a significant amount of Word and Excel documents on this system, several hundred - all are gone.
It would appear that anything on the system that was created by the user, no longer exists, please help.
I have imaged the notebook drive and transfered it to another computer, question - Is the image as good as the physical drive for (possible) data retrievability? I am under pressure to get this system back into service and will do so straight away if the image is as good as anything to try and get these files back.
I really have no idea what happened, have backups of most of the important files but this will become a major PIA if the rest is lost.
This system is under a year old and showing no signs of hardware failure.

Thank you in advance.

Daniel.

 

[linney]

The first thing to try is ChkDsk /r from the Recovery Console in case McAfee has corrupted the Partition tables or other parts of the drive.

I wonder if re-installing McAfee would have any effect, it might be too late for that as you have used System Restore?

Do you have any extra username folders in Documents And Settings or even on your Desktop?

You could try some of the available Data Recovery Programs on your Image and see what they can find.

http://www.restorer2000.com

http://www.runtime.org/hints.htm

Users recycle bin
thread779-744465

At least you have some backups, restoring them may be easier than data recovery. Unfortunately working on the hard drive after the disaster will be overwriting and therefore ruining your chances of any data recovery.

 

[Happo]

Thanks linney but it would appear all the files are lost.

Chkdsk did nothing for me, I think system restore actually ruined my chances of any data retrieval, next time I am imaging first and attempting fixes later.

Do you have any extra username folders in Documents And Settings or even on your Desktop?

Only the users that were set up on the system, in Docs and Settings not Desktop, all these folders are empty now anyway.

Using Data Recovery software I can get to some of the files but they are toast, most won't open and those that do give me a screen full of gibberish.

These are the things that only happen to other people....another timely reminder of the importance of continual backups.

Daniel.

 

[kiddpete]

Have you tried GetDataBack? I used it on a drive that had Windows installed over the old data including a quick format prior to the installation. It recovered a lot of files which were good.