well i am seriously pissed off now.
I tryed a reinstall of windows, it said it would leave most files intact, upon completion, so silly me i trusted it and didnt worry about it. so i reinstall windows to find every god damn thing i had gone. pictures and movies that i will never be able to get again, sound files i cant get again. the restore point hasnt worked and i have lost everything. i swear someone will pay, this has ruined what was a great weekend, i have had two days straight with no headaches and i have had sucess with a few things.
damn it.
any advice on how to fix this please?
i am seriously upset at loosing what i did.
on a side note at least yahoo now works again

Experience is an expensive teacher.

You might try getting an undelete program.  There are plenty of free ones available, and you might recover some things that haven't been overwritten.

A reinstall in place should have left everything as it was. I've had to do this three or four times over the last year or so. My restore points NEVER work so this has been the only fix.

Don't want to be mean but there is really one word for this: BACKUP

I do weekly, got 10 CD-RW CD's, overwrite old ones and use over and over. There is nothing like loosing important files.

I can sympathise with both Craig & Pippin as my HD fried recently & I lost ALL my current work. The lost files were all originals & therefore irreplaceable. My CDRW packed up some time ago so I was unable to follow my own advice to backup regularly & can only blame myself.

Craig. It depends how important this is to you. If you found a program that can retrieve those missing files I suggest it's worth paying for. I would willingly pay any reasonable amount to have my source files back.

PS. This could easily happen again. I think your best option would be to get those USB ports fixed.

thanks again:)
and i am thinking i will but i think it is out of warrenty, and i will end up paying big i have a feeling. sadly though i really cant afford to loose my computer, for almost a month, well going to have to look into it.
side note, one bit of good news i have found some of the files i had on a disc, i must have in one moment of madness trusted them to it:) so i am in a bit of a better mood, and will now try those programs
Cheers guys

thanks hagar:)
i tried PC world but they refused to fix it because i bought it from comet.(they are all the same company anyway)
i will phone around see what i can find as i desperatly need this fixed.

a side note though, bill gates better use that room he has never been near in his life. thats the weight room. as should i ever meet him, like alot of people here, i shall tear his arms off and shove them where the sun dont shine:)