Compute crashed.... Help to recover harddrive files... virus???

[Brenney]

My computer crashed.  It went right back so it looked the second you take it out of the box when it was new... register with gateway, set up internet, install programs, etc.

The sad thing is I wasn't the one using it when it happened so, I really don't know what happened.

I tried to go back to a restore point but there isn't any.

I've got the computer up and running.  Internet is back on. 

My question is:  How do I recover what I had on there before?  Can I recover things I had saved like Microsoft word or excel documents?  Can I recover pictures or other files?

Any help is greatly appreciated!  Thank You.

[patio]

It's unclear what you have done...but if the CD or hidden recovery partition were used to revert back to Day One status then your data is gone...

[Brenney]

Sorry I am unclear.  I really don't know what happened either. I did not use the CD to start again... the computer just kind of did that on its own.  Basically the computer is back to square one. 

 I was just hoping to recover files on the harddrive.  I ran Pandora recovery and got a few photos back but nothing else.

Thank you for your help.