I suppose you using Active@ Undelete tool to try restore files. this is a really mighty data recovery tool that yet never failed me before nor it corrupted any of the brought back files. That should really help, try it out.
If you do not have the names of the files you are looking for, you're in trouble. Hopefully, you do, so click START, SEARCH, then enter the name of one of the files, and click enter. This should find where your files are stored.
What the **** was he doing saving important work on the Windows partition anyway? I'd never do that. Always have a seperate partition (or even better, a seperate hard drive) for important data. You never know when your OS could kick the bucket, with the only solution being to format.