Lost files after xp to windows 7 reformat

Hello everyone

My wife has an old laptop that she asked me to reformat. I did this and reformatted with a complete harddisk delete (I installed windows 7 via cd and deleted the three partitions that were on it).
When I got home with the newly sorted machine she asked me where all her old text documents and pictures were?!
Oh bugger.
So - I know that there is software that can recreate the old setup. I have had a search around online and they all promise the world (as long as you pay the fee of course). I have nothing against buying software that works but Would rather first ask everyone here if;
A: Is there a Microsoft utility that can do this?
B: Does anyone know of some reputable software that can do this with understandable results (the free trials i have tried (Data Recovery Pro, EaseUS Data recovery and iSkysoft Data Recovery) do not give the most understandable results. The above trials do not give a huge amount of information that is understandable.
For the sake of my sex life can anyone help?
Thanks
Tim

As you deleted partitions, formated, then over wrote files the chances of getting anything back is 0 you could try for hours and get nothing. Try a bunch of flowers blame Microsoft

Recuva has (mostly) worked for me on a hard drive that has been formatted 4 times (long story), so try it out. It may work for you if the Windows files didn't overwrite the personal documents that she is looking for (you might have a good chance).

Not to be critical, but did it occur to either you or your wife that when you reformat the drive, all of the data on it would disappear, and that therefore you should have done a backup of the drive before formatting it?

The fact that you formatted the hard drive AND deleted all of the partitions on the hard drive AND installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 on the hard drive means that your chances of data recovery are slim to none (more likely none). You had a pretty good chance of recovering the files prior to installing Windows 7, because nothing on the drive would have yet been overwritten. But once you began writing to the hard drive (installed Windows 7), your chances of successful recovery went way down.

The only chance you have is to either get some good quality file recovery software, or send the drive to a good file recovery service. And whatever you do, DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING TO THE HARD DRIVE.

You might be able to do some piecemeal recovery IF she has emailed any of these items to anyone. She could check old emails to see if anything is there.