Files disappeared after reinstalling Vista
 

Quick Synopsis:

Gateway laptop, two years old, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB hard drive.
Windows Vista Home Premium.
User with overinflated sense of his computer knowledge, and who was far, far too stupid to regularly backup files

I had a registry error that caused me to reinstall Vista. My old files were saved in a folder called Windows.old. At first, I could see all of my old Program Files folders as well as get into the folders under my old user account, and I attempted to copy both to their corresponding folder in the new Vista folders. Bad idea, as the copy didn't work and I was unable to get into the folders under my old account or view most of the Program Files folders.

After receiving advice, and fooling around with permissions, I managed to get into my old user account and get the documents from there I need. However, the one remaining thing I really need are my saved emails from Thunderbird, and nothing, from permissions to installing a new version in the new Vista folders and attempting an import seems to work.

I have a pretty good idea that everything is actually there, since throughout the process the space taken up on my hard drive never changed, but I don't know what else I can do to find what I need.

Does anyone have any idea how to do this? Maybe at least any idea what I'm talking about?

I plan on completely reformatting and reinstalling everything as soon as I can get those emails, but I really need those emails.

I really appreciate any help I can get. Unless you tell me it's impossible, in which case what the hell do you all know! ;)

You could try starting Windows Explorer in administrator mode. That will allow you to copy files regardless of permissions. After reinstalling Vista, I also had (and still have) a lot of problems accessing my old files. Running as administrator allows you to move the files, which seems to change the permissions.

You could try to use Recuva, Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File Recovery - Home see if the files are located on the drive but have been accidentally deleted.

For future instances, I would recommend Thunderbird Portable Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives .