I bought a newer computer with all necessary components except a hard drive. I installed the hard drive from my old computer running Win XP Pro into it. I performed a clean install of XP because, of course, the old settings would not work in the new hardware. I did not reformat the drive. Regrettably, I did not back up the My Documents folders before I did this, and the new installation overwrote the existing folders with blank ones. Is there a way to recover the contents of the original My Documents folder, or are they now lost forever? Computing since DOS 5.0

Don't do ANYTHING with this computer until you decide if you want to try recovery software or ship off the HDD to a data recovery service.

I have software - "Recover My Files" - I want to learn what the magicians at a data recover service DO to recover files. I had a crashed HD that I attempted ro use the above-mentioned software on without success. I recovered very few files and they were all corrupted. Computing since DOS 5.0

try file scavenger...I use it and have had great results, all the files have the origional names on recovery. They have a free trial and to me, it has been worth the money because I've recovered pics and documents from many client CD's....NO...I don't work for the company. I've tried DataBack and numerous others and IMHO they don't work as well as File Scavenger. Hopefully my advice will help you...Please post back with your results....thanks

Have you gone to c:\settings and documents to see if your former profile folder is existing? You need to be logged in as administrator. Simply put if you were logging in as JDoe a new install without format would have left that folder and its contents on the drive. If you were logging in as Administrator then with the new install you would have a new folder. Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.