I've read that there's no easy way to recover your data after an F10 system restore on an HP machine. That can NOT be true!! If it is, curse you HP!!! Why would they make a single key that destroys your data?? After the restore completes, there are still programs installed that were there before. It just looks like the profiles in "documents and settings" are gone. It doesn't look like a full format was done on the partition.
What does the HP F10 system restore do? Does it blow away the partition? Does it format the partition? Does it convert it to FAT32, restore, then back to NTFS? Does it ZIP up the profiles under "Documents and settings" and put them somewhere?
Thanks.
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I've run numerous programs including Ontrack's and haven't found what i'm looking for. Yes, the data is very important. I wouldn't mind finding out what the restore process does. The programs I installed are still there so, I don't think it formated. But the profiles under "documents and settings" are gone. Why would HP do such a thing? If of course, that is what happens? They should at least backup the profiles somewhere maybe in a ZIP file.
Hello Johnny_Ringo:
You said 'The programs I installed are still there' - these are not programs that came on the machine but software you installed afterward, right? Does that software still work or is it orphaned since there are no registry entries for it?
You might want to try Kanotix - it's a 'live' Linux that runs off the CD drive. It has some useful recovery tools.
http://kanotix.com/index.h
wb
i would suggest turning the drive in at gillware for recovery : good, and cheaper :
http://www.gillware.com/
Johnny_Ringo -
According to an HP document at:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/
There are two "methods" of recovering the computer - a Destructive Recovery (fully erase and format) and a standard System Recovery (replace system files with originals). It's mentioned that even a standard System Recovery may move or remove certain files, including User Profiles, Documents and/or Programs installed after you purchased the computer.
Supposedly, according to another document,
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/
which is mentioned in a todo list to be followed after a System Recovery, the files would still be there, but are simply inaccessible due to user permissions (and gives instructions for changing user permissions so you can access them), although this sounds unlikely from what you described in earlier comments (Ontrack's software should have been able to retrieve them, and HPs documents don't mention simply hiding the files so that you wouldn't see them without changing folder view settings - you may want to make sure you can see hidden files just to be 100% sure...)
Besides that, I don't believe there are any other documents on HP that describe the System Recovery Process - sorry about that. If the files no longer exist and can't be found with even a Hex Editor or Ontrack's Recovery Software, you may want to follow the advice of either warrenbuckles or nobus and actually turn the drive over for recovery.
-HN
Your "restore" did not fully overwrite the data you seek as the "programs are still there"; but, Windows XP loves to clobber the user accounts in the Documents and Settings folder.
GetDataBack is a fabulous program ( http://www.runtime.org/ ). You need the NTFS version and will have to have another drive to copy the files to. The free eval will let you see what it has found and, if you save the Step 5 results, you can go buy the version to recover your files without having to run the scans again. As a note, the odds are your files will be in a folder named for the cluster it was found on, so spend some time looking at the gazillion things it will find!
HP / Compaq F10 restore does 2 things
normal mode: it does overwrites your system with the factory installation but without deleting any of your data. You still have all your data but any application you installed yourself you will need to reinstall.
in advanced mode it deletes the entire drive and loads a fresh copy of the factory preinstalled software. Data will be wiped out. Result will be as if you just got a new computer from them.
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by: warrenbucklesPosted on 2007-03-02 at 17:01:53ID: 18645533
Hello Johnny_Ringo:
It's a system restore, not a data restore, so you have a system as it left the factory.
If it's any comfort, the user data is probably still there, in some form, but I'm pretty sure the file system has been re-initialized so there is no way to associate the scattered data with a file structure.
If it's really, really valuable data you might be able to recover some of it by sending the drive to Ontrack or one of the other data recovery services but that would probably be good money after bad data.
There are other tools around the may be able to recover some of the data. This article gives you some of the basics and points toward some free and commercial tools:
http://www.pcstats.com/art
wb