I am in the midst of re installing XP, but aborted the install when I learned that my personal documents, music and photos would be erased. Is that true and if it is, is there any recourse, realizing that I am 1/2 way through the install. That is, is there a recovery possibility

What type of reinstall were you doing? Were you doing a Repair install using the OS CD, or were you doing a format and reinstall? If you didn't format and just did a Repair, then the documents will be intact. If you stopped the reinstall in the middle, then you will not be able to boot the OS, and you'll have to finish the reinstall. Life is more painless for those who are brainless.

Most OEM restore procedures restore the drive to factory state. That means your personal files would be gone. I don't know if Gateway restore works like that or not. I recommend you download Knoppix live CD. Use a different computer of course. Knoppix is a version of Linux that can boot and run from the CD. It does however install some files that are necessary for Knoppix to access the hardware. This means it could possibly overwrite more files but if you were halfway done your files may be long gone. If you really want to be as safe as possible then don't do anything more to the drive at all. You would need to connect it in a different computer as a slave. Chances are no version of Windows will be able to see any of the files on the drive, assumming there are any there. Knoppix doesn't rely on the file systems used by Windoows, so if files are still present but the file system has been destroyed Knoppix MAY be able to access the remaining files. All this is predicated on the Gateway restore overwriting everything. Hopefully, I am wrong and it doesn't. There are also recovery programs and professional recovery services. If it were mine I would get Knoppix and in the meantime hopefully someone with MORE knowledge of EXACTLY how a Gatway restore works will come along. If you have a manual for the GAteway it may describe in some detail how thier restore works. One other thing of note. Knoppix download is free but big. It is 700MB and after the download you will need to burn a CD using the downloaded files. If that isn't practical you can also find sites that sell Knoppix CDs already made for just a few dollars. Google for Knoppix.

Since it's a Gateway box, I assume that you are doing a Gateway restore. That normally wipes out everything and restores the box to the way it came from the factory. You could try removing the drive, attaching it as a slave to a different XP system and try to access and save your personal data. But since it was half way through the process, I doubt if there is any chance of recovery.

windows can be installed over the top of an already installed copy of windows though all files folders and previous versions of windows will be renamed to include the ~ symbol. So, your previous version with contained folders included will read as follows, ~windows. The existing files will be transfered across and will only be accessed by a search through the previous windows installation. Note* If you Format first, you will certainly lose all saved data.

Use the hard drive as a secondary drive on another pc and see if any information has been deleted first, if you can still read your files held on that 2nd drive you can copy the files across to the primary drive before you completely format and reinstall the O/S on the original drive again. A worthy point here is this my friend, do lots of restore point saves, especially when you first install an O/S and save between each hardware/software install. Also, a Back up copy of your configurations is wise.