Lost pictures

Hi,
A week or so ago my brother in law gave me a disc for microsoft office. I came in from work, put the disc in my laptop, started the disc up and went up to shower.
When I came back downstairs, I was horrified to see he'd given me a copy of Vista instead, and my laptop had been wiped clean He hadn't listened to me as I already had Vista, I just wanted office and obviously not to change my system. I lost about 160Gb of my pics. My favs were backed up, but I like to keep all my pics for when my skills and/or better software gets released.
Now, the strange thing is when I looked at my computer details, it was showing 160Gb of space used ?? Are my pics still there and recoverable ?? I have done searches and tried restores to no avail..... Can anyone please help me ??

Vista installed itself without you pushing a single button?!

It's possible (even likely) that Vista installed onto the disk but didn't format the disk, so there's a good chance they're there.

What folder were your images in? How have you checked that location - windows explorer?

I'm surprised.
There have to be choices after the disk is read.
They must be there.

Check and see if teh new vista install created another partition. Your old OS and pic's will be on the other one. The pictures should still be their as more than likely vista just went ahead and did a system repair/restore. It should have left the contents of your documents in tack. Only install disks i have evr seen that need no user input like that are disks that are used by computer repair shops when they are doing multiple systems but they still stop and wait for your key to be entered

I'm with the others, I can't believe there was a full install without a single button push. Also, a valuable lesson as to why you need backups.

Impossible for it to do that without a bunch of clicks....

The OP is not providing the full truth.

Vista disk will not even boot up is there is an OS already installed. You have to hit a any key at bootup. Then it will ask if you are sure you want to overwrite Windows.

Thanks for the replies all,
Yes, when I say I started the disc up, I obviously pressed all the relevant buttons to install the software, i did it because I thought I was installing office though..... I cant remember any prompts to tell me I was overwriting Vista, but thats not to say there weren't there. I was rushing to shower and not particularly paying attention to the boxes popping up, I just sped through the commands and left it to its own devices after..........
All my pics were in LR3 and a seperate folder titled Photography Keepers. I have done searches for both with no luck.
Any suggestions will be greatfully received.

Power off the computer, remove hard drive and then take it to a service center or friend and see what they can recover. Every time you use the computer you increase the chance of overwriting files. A deep scan will take an hour or two. It's likely that the pix are still there since you have not installed anything else... You haven't installed anything, right?

No MaxxuM I haven't put anything else on my laptop.......... Can I do anything from home

Attach drive to another computer and use Recuva to scan drive for deleted/formated over files. You cannot recover files from the same computer else you'll overwrite files.

You don't know the knowledge to do this. Take at least the disk or maybe the whole machine to a specialist, or at least a knowledgable friend. Stop using the disk immediately.

Hi,
Just an update to maybe help someone as stupid as me in the future............ I clicked on computer in the 'start' box bottom left. I then clicked on my C drive and, when it opened up, in there was a file called WINDOWS OLD. In there, were all my old files from before my error

Thanks to everyone who offered help

h14nha wrote in post #12963377
Hi,
I clicked on computer in the 'start' box bottom left. I then clicked on my C drive and, when it opened up, in there was a file called WINDOWS OLD.

This very likely means there is a Windows New somewhere on your machine.

It was a "parallel" Windows installation.
You'll need to put all your settings back in, but your old Windows files will be in Windows.OLD.