Hello Suesgirls2 welcome to PC Help Forum,
When you say XP's restore will not..then you stopped. Will it not work.. Have you gone into the control panel, hit performance and maintence, and in the upper left hand corner there will be "system restore" click that and set ti back to an older date.
Let us know what you have tried so we dont cross reference you.:smiley:
As far as recovery programs there's are a list of free ones here at the site.
http://www.pchelpforum.com/utilities...rams-free.html