Ok I have an issue and I have gotten great advice in the past from this site, so here it is. My brother apparently infected my mother's computer with malware last night. In his haste to fix the infection he apparently ran windows recovery console. Now I don't know anything about recovery console, but my mother is upset and thinks that all of her data that she had prior to him using windows recovery console is gone.

My question: Is this data really gone and can it be recovered? I do not know for sure what my brother did with recovery console, but from the way he talked to me it sounded like windows was restored to a previous state. Any information you could give me would be great because my mother is crying her eyes out thinking she may have lost pics and documents from years ago (and I know she should have backed them up, but she is computer illiterate). Thank you again for any help you can give me.

-David