Question about windows recovery console

[PhilliePhan]

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.

Hi David,

It is hard to give you a definitive answer without more information. From what you describe, it sounds to me as if your brother used the recovery partition to restore the computer to its original state (right out of the box).

If this is the case, then ALL added programs and data will have been lost and you will need to reinstall all Windows updates, old programs, etc....

However, if he had taken this drastic a step, I would imagine you'd be able to tell from talking to him. Perhaps he only did a System Restore?

The recovery console is usually a last resort if Windows won't boot properly, so I'm a bit confused as to why he' start there - Perhaps he wanted to do a system restore and instead did system recovery?

I recently helped a friend restore her compy using steps similar to those outlined in the link below:
http://www.pctechbytes.com/hp-recovery.htm

If your brother did this, then you are not going to be able to recover any lost data without a specialized program or shop.

Best luck
PP

[pyl2os]

Hi David,

It is hard to give you a definitive answer without more information. From what you describe, it sounds to me as if your brother used the recovery partition to restore the computer to its original state (right out of the box).

If this is the case, then ALL added programs and data will have been lost and you will need to reinstall all Windows updates, old programs, etc....

However, if he had taken this drastic a step, I would imagine you'd be able to tell from talking to him. Perhaps he only did a System Restore?

The recovery console is usually a last resort if Windows won't boot properly, so I'm a bit confused as to why he' start there - Perhaps he wanted to do a system restore and instead did system recovery?

I recently helped a friend restore her compy using steps similar to those outlined in the link below:
http://www.pctechbytes.com/hp-recovery.htm

If your brother did this, then you are not going to be able to recover any lost data without a specialized program or shop.

Best luck
PP

From my understanding he ran the Basic windows recovery option that he say under the boot menu. For some reason it was available as an option at start up and has been since my mother purchased the computer (I think). And if that is the case I guess I am going to have to use a data recovery program. Are there any that you reccommend I use? I currently have R-studio which I used when my last hard drive crashed on me. Will this be sufficient of is there a better program out there you can reccommend?

Also am I going to need to unplug the drive from her computer and put them into another computer in order to retrieve data? Because from my understanding you cannot recover data off a hard drive onto the same hard drive unless it was on a different partition, which I know my parents computer is not. Along those same lines what exactly would I be looking for with my recovery software because last time I used it for my crashed hard drive it was really straightforward. This time though I will probably be looking for data that isn't necessarily in the C drive that is present. Any suggestions you could give would be great.

Thanks for your help by the way and I would appreciate any further information you can give me.

-David