I'm a first time poster so I'm sure if this is the correct sub-category. In any event, let me describe my situation: Yesterday evening my computer was running rather slowly so I decided to restart it. When I restarted it, it was unable to move beyond the initial Windows XP startup. I tried Compaq system recovery and that failed because a number of files were missing. I then tried to reinstall Windows XP. That was successful, however, now all of my programs and files are gone and it still indicates that some important system files are missing. Is there any way to recover these missing programs/files?

Thanks,
M J Darling

If you used the recovery did a reformat install. Try tapping f8 while restarting the computer. Reinstall winxp.

If dll files, you could try searching for them here:

DLL-files.com - Download all your missing dll-files. (http://www.dll-files.com/)