Recovering files in the middle of an installation

Not sure if this goes here or the recovery section, but this seemed to fit. Anyways, I'm in a bit of a pickle:my laptop has been plauged with some kinda virus for months, and my attempts at removing it had all been futile, so I gave up and resolved to simply reinstall my copy of Windows 7. I copied all my files onto an external HD but didn't set up any restore points or anything like that. I figured i didn't need to.

That was a terrible decision. I started a clean install, and it proceeded smoothly until the final stage "completing installation". It stayed on that step for about half and hour and I was wondering if it froze or something when I remembered that I had forgotten to backup one of my folders. I panicked and turned the machine off, and turned it back on, navigating the menus in a vain attempt at recovering said folder. I was unsucessful but I did happen to notice on one of those screens that my hard drive still filled up to the same capacity, plus about 10 gigabytes. That gave me some hope that the folder still resided somewhere on my hard drive. And so that's where I am right now: my installation was insucessful but I am hesitant to complete it before knowing what I can do about recovering that folder. Is there any possibility of recovering said folder or should I just move on and try to learn from this experience?

If you didn't correctly boot the installer to Clean Install Windows 7
then all of the old installation is crammed in a windows.old folder in the C root.

You can browse in now to look using Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console or Paragon Rescue Kit Free Edition 11.0 Free CD. The drives may be lettered differently in boot mode.

Then start over by unplugging all other drives and peripherals, booting the installer to get a perfect Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 which steps are the same for retail.

Copy/pasting through the drivers menu worked like a charm. Thanks so much for the speedy replies!