Recovering a deleted account and contained data – XP

[slipd]

Hey guys,

Is there any way of recovering a recently (past two weeks) deleted user account in xp home? It was an administrator account and afaik, it also contained a lot of important data which was prompted for deletion and confirmed at the time of the accounts removal…

I'm having a look at this pc for a clueless friend who has no system of backup, so basically everything she needs is/was contained within that account. It appears another family member deleted 'by mistake.'

I'm not touching anything, but is there any short answer to this scenario (I suspect not ) that could be performed within windows? I don't imagine system restore would help at all, would it? I've told her to prepare for the worst, but I thought I'd ask here first. Is there even a case for a data recovery expert to be called in; are they even in the phone book?

Where does she start? I've already given her the 'lessons to be learned from this' lecture

Thanks.

 

[theheyes]

System restore won't work. Try http://www.recuva.com/

 

[slipd]

System restore won't work. Try http://www.recuva.com/

Thanks mate! Think I've seen that somewhere before?

I'll try it out later on one of my test os's. If its idiot it proof, I'll pass it on

I'm really trying to avoid getting involved in this one; data recovery is well out of my league!

Cheers.

 

[theheyes]

I must confess I've never used it myself, but a lot of people have recommended it before and it has done the job. I keep meaning to try it out on an old hard drive but I haven't got around to it yet.

Hope it works, my only concern is that if the system has been in use for two weeks since the deletion it might have already made some files unrecoverable. Worth a try though.