Installed Windows XP - Erased everything??

[AlyssaJP]

I know nothing about computers so you will have to forgive me, but my laptop recently went haywire and kept rebooting itself so I installed Windows XP Professional (I previously had Windows XP) and now my laptop seems back to normal except I cannot see any of my documents, applications or music....Did I just completely erase my harddrive by installing XP Professional???? I am dreading the answer... If somehow I did not, please let me know how I might find my harddrive data!! Thankyou soooo much for your help!!

Newbie

 

[frozenlead]

Remember a step in the setup where it said it was "formatting your hard disk"? That means erase the disk.

Should have done your homework before you jumped in, bud.

 

[AlyssaJP]

But I never formatted the disk. I actually just reinstalled a Windows XP Professional that I had from my PC to the laptop. So I don't know how to activate my laptop now as the Activation Key was already used for the PC.

 

[AlyssaJP]

Me again... I am now finding more files after doing a restore back-up! But it's still a mess...

 

[frozenlead]

Unless it gave you an option to leave the file system intact and you took it, you can't install XP without a format, to my knowledge. Unless what you're saying is you repaired windows instead of reinstalling it...that's completely different.