Few days back one of my friend has upgraded his system from Windows Xp to Seven and caught into a disaster as he said to me. What he said that he has only updated his operating system without formatting his system drive and was thinking that all the data on the desktop will be intact so he just ignored to take a backup.

After the installation finishes he was shocked to find that he has got the new fresh desktop, none of his old files and folders were there. He has just nearly pulled his hair before he called me as what can be done to retrieve his desktop data.

So now if you have also came across the similar situation then don’t panic as there is a very simple step to find all your data stored. As you have not formatted your system drive, nothing will be lost.

With the any version update or installation of any windows using without format windows installation backs-up all the files in a folder as windows.old.

The Windows.old folder contains the following folders:

•    Windows
•    “Documents and Settings”
•    “Program Files”

While all the “My Documents” data is located in the Documents and Settings folder, all the programs installed earlier are now in the Program Files folder.

YOu can open this folder Clicking Start, type %systemdrive%\Windows.old in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER. and search here for all the previous files