retrieval of lost favorites in Windows Explorer

HELP----My son reformatted his hard drive of about 10GB. He has windows xp home edition. He thought his favorites would be saved. Does anyone know of a freeware program he can use to retrieve his favorites. Thanks for any assistance.

 

Well, did he format the drive on which Windows and other softwares were installed? If yes, then there is no tool to help you out. He probably messed his computer by doing this blindly. I have heard about a software but i don't think it really works. You may want to check it out.

O&O DiskRecovery 4

Try it and see if it works for you or not. Atleast, they state so in the features section that it can "retrieve" or "reconstruct" files from even a formatted hard drive. This is the time to test it. Go ahead and see if it really works. Otherwise, I don't think it is possible to retrieve the lost favourites again. Tell me how it goes. Good Luck.

 

Probably gone because overwritten by the installation, though formatting would not necessarily have harmed the files in and of itself. But some free tools to try:

PCI File Recovery
Tokiwa Data Recovery

It would be best not to use the drive that the data is on at all so that it doesn't get overwritten. If at all possible, put it in another machine for the recovery scan.