HELP - Lost data after reinstalling XP

My laptop is a DELL Inspiron 6000. OS : XP Home edition.
During boot I got the error message : "No master boot sector found" or something similar.
After several attempts I decided to reinstall the OS (XP Pro, from an old CD, as Dell did
not give me a Windows CD), as I had done in the past on another PC, believing it would
keep my application programs and data. Unfortunately that did not happen, as i found
myself with a bare-bones OS and no trace whatsoever of other data on the HD.
Can I recover the old data ? I downloaded a couple of utilities but they are hard to
manage and no appreciable results were obtained.
Can someone please help ? I am in a terrible fix, as I use the laptop for my work. I had
all my invoices stored there, along with clients' data and emails, three-years-worth of
stuff.
Thanks in advance.

Mike

On Mar 24, 5:25 pm, "Mike" <tooc...@no-spam-tin.it> wrote:
> My laptop is a DELL Inspiron 6000. OS : XP Home edition.
> During boot I got the error message : "No master boot sector found" or something similar.
> After several attempts I decided to reinstall the OS (XP Pro, from an old CD, as Dell did
> not give me a Windows CD), as I had done in the past on another PC, believing it would
> keep my application programs and data. Unfortunately that did not happen, as i found
> myself with a bare-bones OS and no trace whatsoever of other data on the HD.
> Can I recover the old data ? I downloaded a couple of utilities but they are hard to
> manage and no appreciable results were obtained.
> Can someone please help ? I am in a terrible fix, as I use the laptop for my work. I had
> all my invoices stored there, along with clients' data and emails, three-years-worth of
> stuff.
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Mike

Mike,
Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that stuff is most likely gone.
The ONLY program I have had any luck with "resurrecting" data is
GetDataBack for NTFS. It's not free, but you can scan for free to see
if it will recover anything worth while. Here's a link to the
company's site: http://www.runtime.org/downloads.htm
</jordan>

Please tell me this isnt a business PC with no data backups

If that is the case stop fooling around with recovery apps, and stop using
the PC completely
Send it to a data recovery specialist, where you will have to shell out
several $ks on a no recovery no fee basis
And if you are still in business after this depacle invest in a data backup
regime - and test your backups regularly

"Mike" <toocool@no-spam-tin.it> wrote in message
news:uBc0mWfjIHA.4712@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> My laptop is a DELL Inspiron 6000. OS : XP Home edition.
> During boot I got the error message : "No master boot sector found" or
> something similar.
> After several attempts I decided to reinstall the OS (XP Pro, from an old
> CD, as Dell did not give me a Windows CD), as I had done in the past on
> another PC, believing it would keep my application programs and data.
> Unfortunately that did not happen, as i found myself with a bare-bones OS
> and no trace whatsoever of other data on the HD.
> Can I recover the old data ? I downloaded a couple of utilities but they
> are hard to manage and no appreciable results were obtained.
> Can someone please help ? I am in a terrible fix, as I use the laptop for
> my work. I had all my invoices stored there, along with clients' data and
> emails, three-years-worth of stuff.
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Mike
>