Computer goes into system restore when boot with usb hard drive

[Alco]

I have a gateway 3018GX with XP home. I restarted my computer with an external usb hard drive plugged in, and I got the "missing partition press R to begin full system restore" message.
I called gateway, and they told me I had to run the system restore. All my old data is gone now, and my computer is resotred to the original factory settings.

Is there any way to recover any of my old data?

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Highly unlikely.
Gateway gave you crap advice.... They should have told you to make backups first, so blame them initially.

But blame yourself most as well for not having any backups. That is sheer stupidity in this day and age!

 

[Alco]

That's kind of what the external HD was for - backup. I had about 95% of my stuff backed before the POS crashed. There's a couple of files I want to try to restore. I was really wondering if anyone has had any luck with "File Scavenger" or any similar programs.

 

[RealBlackStuff]

Oh, they have, but chances on a 'restored' system are much smaller. If you really MUST have them back, then services like Kroll Ontrack will try, but at a premium price.

Do away with those restore disks, and get a copy of a proper XP Home CD. Your COA/serial should be on your PC or on some document that came with that PC.
Sort all your drivers etc out. Then reinstall XP on a partitioned harddisk. 10GB for Windoze, the rest for programs and userdata.