Everything lost - have to start from scratch?

[Eyecare]

Well perhaps not everything but I'm still not a happy camper. The laptop I attached my x30 to decided to blow it's FAT (I believe) and now nothing I had on there is accessible. I can run Windows but every program, document, photo, all have disappeared to include all the programs, license keys and serial numbers for my PPC programs. No backup either and XP2 can't find a restore point.
At least my x30 works fine but now my question is what's the best way to "restore" programs and settings from it back to my laptop, or is that even possible?

[motionmind]

You have to reinstall what you need on your laptop, including ActiveSync and Outlook if that's what you use for contacts, and then sync the PPC. That will at least give you your calendar, contacts, notes etc back. Any other programs you have that trade data between the PC and PPC will also have to be reinstalled (like Pocket Quicken), but most of your programs don't need anything on the PC to work properly.

What you described about the laptop isn't possible without inserting the recovery CD that it came with and taking it back to factory defaults...aka, format. So...who has had access to your laptop and the factory cd's that it came with?

[Waxwing]

Wouldn't be surprised if they're not still there, just impossible to see. Norton used to have a program that could recover files from the hard drive, suspect they still do but don't recall the name, etc. If you've got a reliable computer super store around, I would drive over there and quiz someone. Also, if you had Norton's Ghost and backed up to a CD-RW, you could recover.