Afriend was going to "tune up" my computer." When he gave it back to me, everything was gone. He wiped everything clean. No documents, no pics, no drivers. Everything gone. Not sure if he reloaded windows, reformatted or what. I know, I shouldn't have let him mess with it to begin with, or backed up my files, so please no lectures. Im upset enough, and learned my lesson. I used to have Windows XP Pro, Now, Its just Windows XP. Can I recover my files? Please help

You can try 'data recovery wizard', but it will set you back $ 70 , though !

Have a look here at this link

Note : some of the data may have been overwritten by the new Windows installation. It all depends what your 'friend' did with the hard drive. But if there is anything still on it, that 'data recovery wizard' will get it.

To prevent more (possible) data loss : it would be best to install the wizard on a different computer, transfer your hard drive to that computer as second hard drive, and than recover and back up the data on CD, DVD, memory stick, or external hard drive. Note : but NOT YET on your own hard drive !

Re-install the harddisk in your own computer. Follow up with partitioning your hard drive in at least a C and a D drive. Use the C drive for the Windows installation, and the D drive for all data back-up. Depending the size of your hard drive, give 'C' at least 10 GB and provide 'D' with the rest. If it is a big drive, make 'C' 20 GB.

Next step is installing Windows : have your own Windows Pro CD ready.
Do a format c:/u to clear the C drive properly.
Now install Windows PRO, and follow up with anti-virus and firewall.
Copy the recovered data to the 'back-up' D drive, and install the various other software on 'C'.
Keep the 'D' drive for storage of all data, and 'C' for Windows and all installed programs.

Remember to make regular back-ups on CD, DVD, memory stick, or external hard drive. You know now how important this is!
Have also a file for all ID's and paswords backed-up. Success!

Try some recovery software like PC inspector or search in Google for the free ones!

Actually if you haven't over write drives, you could recover them. The less you write in, the more you recover.

Deleted File Recovery
Recuva
PC inspector

All right!