Unformat XP partition

[emsee_bristol]

I have been trying to rescue a friends PC after it had been infected by viruses/malware.

I was booting off their XP CD to get to the recovery console but instead of going to the usual menu, it started formatting the hard drive straight away (it was a copy of a XP disk which obviously was set up with some sort of scripting to install the OS automatically).
Anyway, I presume it was doing a quick format as the progress bar was moving quickly before I stopped it by ejecting the CD, pressing escape and pulling my hair out (I don't think the latter actually had much effect!).

Now it won't boot at all.

Are there any free utilities out there which can either unformat the drive & restore the boot table or at least allow me to copy files to another drive?

From reading other posts on various forums, TestDisk looks like it might help but it looks a bit complicated - is it quite easy to use or are there other programs people would recommend?

 

[MrLinux]

To be honest, if TestDist is too complicated you should be taking it to someone else; data recovery can be a complicated business, that's why the automatic (and friendly) tools cost money.

 

[OEMangel]

Once a partition is formatted there is no way to unformat or undo it.

If you only performed a "Quick Format", this overwrites the file table entries. The actual files remain until overwritten but there is no "address book" for where they are.

There are lots of programs to perform data recovery. Most likely you will have to pay, so you have to decide if its worth it.

Good luck!