Portégé Laptops

[#1]

I just received my "repaired" laptop from Toshiba. It's working fine, but I can't find any of my files. The only information that is provided is that it was re-imaged.  I have no idea what that means??? I have a portege m700-s7005v. I was on XP, but now they have installed VistaBusiness, which I'm a little irritated about. Can anyone please help???

[#2]

Re-imaged means that they wiped you hard drive and installed Windows using the latest Windows Image for that system.  ANY and ALL files that were on that system when it went in for repair are now gone for good with a 99.9% chance that they can not be recovered without spending a LOT of money (and I mean thousands of dollars).  That's why one should NEVER send a computer in for repairs without backing up all of their files first. 

To get back to XP you can use your Recovery Disks if you have them or the XP Install Disk you used to install it previously.  If you had purchased that with XP Pre-installed and you don't have the XP Recovery Disks you'll need to contact Toshiba to obtain them as outlined in this post.

[#3]

Your files are gone.  Backups are important even if you don't send it in for repair.  Allways backup your files.

From the detailed specs your unit shipped with Vista Business but also had XP Pro recovery meda.  So use the recovery media to restore the unit to XP.  Maybe you had someone do this for you and they simply used the recovery discs to do it.

The recovery disc is a much better way to install Windows XP as it has all the drivers and patches in place already. 

Also if the only thing they say is they reimaged the computer, then that means the problem you had was a software problem, not a hardware problem.

[#4]

What you experienced is standard operating procedure for most shops.  The first thing done is to reimage the drive to eliminate the possibility that the problem is software or driver related.  I have used a local PASP on several occasions and they are nice enough to warn the user if they intend to wipe the drive but that's by no means the usual.  More often, the warning appears in the very fine print on the back of the service order.  And as another poster said, yes, your files are gone unless you wish to have a forensic recovery undertaken and that's a very expensive process, running into thousands or tens of thousands depending on the amount a data to be recovered.