switching motherboard doesn't realy require you to format windows. If windows doesn't start after a motherboard change, you simply go into safe mode, install drivers and reboot. If that doesn't work, get back into safe mode, remove motherboard specific hardware (installed drivers I mean, don't go ripping out your onboard sound card ) and reboot. After this reboot, windows will find new hardware and install the correct drivers.

If I were you, I'd try sueing them, loosing data is priceless and it's unacceptable they've destroyed all of your data without even asking a thing. Or at least scare them a bit so they'll never format a hdd in the future without asking .

What i would have done to protect my data would to back it all up to another slave hard drive in another pc, or as someone suggested above just take out the harddrive and when you get the computer back just fix all the issues yourself. It is good to have the backup of your harddrive anyways just incase something does go wrong and you lose a load of precious irreplacable data.
Wonder what would have happened if you had a raid array (the one which makes 2 copies of each hd), if lucky you still could have had 1 hd with your data intact.

-HellFire

yes but then on that board it would have to be a software raid array, and i prefer hardware ones. I know at least in most cases it doesn't require you to format your drive to install windows. either do what wutske said or just repair the install. i opt for the latter because it doesn't require any extra time on my part. i just pop the cd in, set it to repair and come back when it's finished.

That really stinks! First of all, make sure the idiot guy gets fired!!! Did you try system restore? Someone else had said this already, but I wanted to make sure you heard. Also, if you had Symantec's Norton GoBack installed on the computer it will let you "Go Back". I dont know exactly where you can find Norton on your computer, but you can ask a DIFFERENT guy from a DIFFERENT store how to fix this. A last resort could be to open up the BIOS info by clicking the F10 key immediately after starting your computer(this works with my Windows XP Home Edition Laptop) It should open up a blue screen with a bunch of info. Find the Tab for hard drives and restore your hard drive. I dont know if this will work though, because you said he replaced the hard drive. I really feel bad for you though. Make sure you get the idiot fired!!! (then you can sue him!, lol)

-Murtahg

Recovery
Data Recovery

I need to save data off of a hard-drive that wont boot due to windows damage. The owner has a password on the drive and it will not allow me to access it. It says access is denied to the folders I need to save. Can anyone help with this?

-question by Tcptech

I have recentaly face the problem of data loss.My windows partition get corrupted.One of my colleague suggest me to use Stellar Phoenix Windows data recovery software.I have recovered maximum of my data.Its demo version is free in which you can see the preview of your recoverable data.You can try may be it will help you to recover your data.

Download the software from the site
Stellarinfo.Com/partition-recovery.Htm

-reply by Jordan