Howdy. Recently, my Mother was uninstalling Norton Anti-virus on our computer, and upon restarting the computer, it said something about being unable to start windows due to missing a file or some such. This would suggest that the uninstallation of Norton removed some important Windows file, I imagine. We've had numerous anti-virus programs (all but Norton free) over the last couple years, if that matters.
While HP Recovery was going, there was some issue of a file being missing, if I remember correctly, an i386 cab. Retry did not work, so I clicked ignore, and eventually, everything had finished and the computer had restarted. However, things were wrong. While the hard drive shows the same amount of **** on it - only ~1 gig free, the My Music folder and My Picture folder are devoid of our stuff. Some programs are missing, and many programs don't run, and it seems that everything that is left doesn't uninstall. Everything else about the computer basically went back to factory defaults. I had to reinstall I.E. 7, and Windows installer, and all the system settings were reset.
Is there any way to get my files back? The hard drive says it's still full as it was before, yet I can't access anything. What could be the matter? A virus? An issue with uninstalling Norton? Are my files lost forever? If so, I've lost some very important information. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Welcome to PCHF!

Try this: go to start, run and type in sfc /scannow

Good luck,
Adam