Laptop...factory settings have been reset!!!

[brightwell]

For some reason ds has reset factory settings on my laptop, causing me to "lose" everything. Is there anyway it can be put right. I've looked at the system restore & the only restore date is the date ds played about.

First off, it depends on what has actually been done. Sometimes a lot of the files may still exist (eg My Documents) so you could first start by looking to see if any downloaded music or saved photos or other documents are still available.

If they are, that's a fairly good sign. If not, might be useful to know what version of Windows you had on the machine and what make and model it was (in case someone can help from having had one the same).

In general you would probably need to re-install any software and if you have default templates or other settings (like favourites/bookmarks) they may have gone too.

In this instance a little late, but if it helps any, some things I've used in the past are www.DriveHQ.com which allows you to store up to 1 GB of files for free (and they offer software which will monitor a folder and save anything new or modified you put in there, so the latest copy of your poem / play / book can be kept safe). You can also save a copy of any software you download onto the DriveHQ web space so things you find useful are available in case you need them on a new (or existing) PC.

Firefox can be made to hold lots of website passwords and display them on screen. I have about 10 or so pages of different sites and account/username snapshots (saved to my DriveHQ web space). You can also save your bookmarks to a file. I give a name like FF100403.html for FireFox 2010-04-03 (today) and that can be saved for me with all the important bookmarks I had saved up until today.

It's an HP compaq 6735s, windows vista. I,ve no idea why factory settings were restored ds 12 "just did it"!

I'm guessing that the whole disk has been overwritten and everything wiped. If that is right, then the more you use the system, the less you will be able to recover.

It's best to stop using the system and take it to a local specialist computer shop (or PC World if there isn't a decent computer shop in the vicinity) and see what they can recover.

There is also Recuva and similar tools, if you don't want to spend any money, but you risk recovering less than could be done by a competent specialist.

I thought it was major!!!! I think most of what was on it is backed up. Thanks anyway.