i was using windows xp and installed vista home premium over it now i have no access to my old files?

Question

does anyone know how to retrieve the old files from windows xp ? or even know how to delete the old stuff i cant get too + i did not back up my files

Answer 1

Since you didn't back up you're files before you installed Vista, no. When you installed Vista, you're hard drive was reformatted. So, everything is gone. And there is really not anything you can do about it. Sorry.

Answer 2

It all depends on how you installed Vista. If you did a fresh install all your old files are overwritten. If you added Vista and kept the old XP installation, so you could dual boot, your files are still there.

Go into My Computer and select the C: drive. Look for your old files and folders. If you don't see them your files have been lost.

You can try a third party recovery program to get some of them back, but there is no guarantee. Go here for a free program: http://www.piriform.com/2007/12/5/recuva-v109190

Answer 3

OK, why would you install over top without backing up the files? Never make any significant system changes without doing so to a separate physical device (another hard disk, CD/DVD, network drive, etc...).

At this point, your best bet is attempting to recover using some sort of file recovery program. You want to stop using the computer until you do this or your regular usage could potentially over write the data. Even after a hard disk format, most data is recoverable as long as it hasn't had data written over it.

Good luck and always do a backup of anything important on your system. You should do this as part of a normal process anyways incase of hardware failure too.

** Edit **
Sain - As long as the disk drive is of a decent size, they have a good chance of the data still residing on the disk. The file pointers will have been removed as part of the format but the data could be safe. Continual use of the system though increases the chance of some data being written to the same disk sectors though. This chance increases if the disk size is smaller as you have a greater chance of writing to sectors with existing data then.

Answer 4

If this was a clean install, Vista should have created a file in your hard drive called Windows.old which should contain all of your files from XP. Do a search for Windows.old and explore that file.