Dell freezing and loosing programs

[JaneDoe999]

I have a DELL Inspiron 1501 with windows XP which was running slow. I saw on AOL a program to help speed up performance and like a dummy decided to try it. System Mechanic eliminated 3/4 of my shortcuts, eliminated programs and also eliminated the following: system restore, defragment, system clean, word pad, my ability to download programs. It seems all these things are now lost in cyberspace. I called their tech department and they told me to restore to a month earlier. It went thru the motions then informed me it could not be restored I work from home and this problem has cost me plenty. I can't reset my whole computer as I really need some of the programs it eliminated. Can anyone please help. Thanks in advance

 

[Sheepykins]

Hi, lost defrag? lol didnt think it was possible
First of all I wouldnt trust AOL as far as i could throw my car, but their techie is right. If you've made a system change and somethings gone wrong a system restore is the easiest way to do that. If not a restore point to a month earlier, are the any other restore points you can try?

If not there are some data recovery programs you can try, programs especially something like defrag would be difficult to get back without some sort of Windows recovery though im afraid especially if its taken it out of the UI

some good data farming utilities are recuva and testdisk.
If none of those options work for you, i'm afraid recovery using a recovery disk/partition or a fresh installation may be the easiest option open to you and the least time consuming. You say you use this for work, well 90% of the time business practice is to wipe and reinstall rather than waste time recovering.

And next time I would take frequent backups using other utilities or ghost the drive once you have it how you like it/programs installed.
Ghost allows you to take a virtual snapshot of your system as it is set up, and allows you to reload with everything you installed to the point of creating a ghost image (however backup data and be aware a ghost image made from one PC, will not transfer to another - you have to make a new ghost image for each PC)

thats my two cents but if anyoen else has any better options, **** i'd love to hear them myself for my own problems