System Recovery Problem

  Greetings.

I have a bit of a dilema.  I am using a Gateway laptop that is in good
condition.  I had no problems with it, until i tried to turn it on today, but
all it did was restart during bootup.  The black screen came up telling me to
choose safe mode or last good known config or normal startup. i tried all of
them but nothing.

So what i did next was that i did a 'Gateway System Recovery'.  it gave me
two options: a destructive install, which of course, kills everything, and an
install with a backup, according to gateway, it saves your personal files and
documents.  so i chose option #2.  

I waited the 25-30 minutes of re-install and setup and everything.  my
computer now works fine, only that all of my files and documents are nowhere
to be found!  where can they be?  i have a recovery partition on my hard
drive (which came like that from the factory), but when i try to access it,
it wont let me... it just says that altering those files could damage .. . .
. ..blah.....blah. . ... .   I WANT MY FILES!!!!  I am going crazy or did
Gateway just screw me over?!?!?!?!?

... sorry for the little attitude.....i am desperate.....
--
a response is always welcome...

 Are you logged in with admin privileges?

If so, have you looked in the Documents and Setting for other profiles? The
option you choose may have create a new user, but saved the old so you
aren't seeing it in your current My Documents.
--
James
Orlando (Goofy says "Hey!"), FL

  i checked my hard drive (C:) and it has a folder named something like 'My
Backup ' followed by some numbers, which i guess is the date or time or
something.....
in this folder there is a Documents and Settings folder, but there is
nothing but an all users, administrator, (my account), and owner folders, but
they are all empty except for the all users..... i'm also missing the folder
for the other account i had before......

...what to do, what to do......?




--
as response is always welcome...


"Jaime" wrote:

 Have you contacted Gateway support? This really isn't a Media Center issue,
as the backup/recovery is something each PC maker adds (or doesn't add) to
the PC. It seems as if that folder you found is supposed to have the files
from the old My Doc, etc., but not being familiar with Gateway PC's, I'm not
sure.

Is there some option on menus somewhere for a Gateway recovery/backup?

One other thought, do you have the Folder Options set to show Hidden/System
files? Probably a long shot (and I don't know why), but maybe the backups
are set as hidden?
--
James
Orlando (Goofy says "Hey!"), FL