Data Recovery from Crashed XP System

[cyberrico]

A friend of mine got a bunch of viruses which allegedly made her computer not boot to the desktop. To fix this a friend of hers started a new XP install. The disk he used was on her desk. It seems to be an unattended burned copy of XP with SP3. When I boot her computer it asks for me to insert the disk to continue the install.

I asked her friend whether he selected the option to format first and he said he's sure that he selected "no".

She wants me to help her recover her Quicken data before wiping any data. She said she knows of a shop that offered to attempt to recover this data for $100. She wants me to attempt to do it myself. Hence I am here to ask you good folks for your guidance.

Should I attempt this? If so, what software should I use. Also, should I complete this install and then try to recover the data or is there some sort of recovery software that will do this with a boot disk before it even gets to Windows or a continued Windows install?

Thanks in advance.

 

[carnageX]

Can always try booting off of a Linux LiveCD or putting the HDD into another computer and boot into your normal OS, then copy the data off of the drive from within Windows.

 

[shilishia]

I am extremely sorry that your friend lost her data. Well many a time people faces this trouble from which your friend has just gone through. As you said that her system was corrupted because of virus and she tried a new XP install and unfortunately her data was lost. I think that instead of rebooting it once again she should try data recovery software.

 

[Hefemeister]

If the drive was not formatted hooking the drive up to another computer would be ideal and easy.

If it has been formatted then I would hook it up to another computer and use something like this:
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File Recovery - Download is free and members here have had good success with it.

Remember the fewer times it has been written on the better the chance of data recovery.