computer crashed

well yesterday my comp crashed and i lost all my pics and documents i had saved. everything that was or is important is now gone .
can someone please help me with some advice as to how i could get them back
WITHOUT me taking it to someone to fix and see all my pics and documents that could get me in some big trouble .

it depends on what crashed... try removing the hard drive and putting it in another system that is running the same system like vista or linux... Don't try to boot from it but just drag your docs into a new file folder or a gig mem stick. It worked for me in the past. Good luck. Let me know(PM) if ya need any more help. Oh yeah the drive will be under my computer like drive E or D

Here is the whole story. Tried to turn computer off the other night would not go off. The next day went to use it and the mouse would not work, even went out and bought a new mouse thinking the old one died. Still nothing. Thought maybe the program to run the mouse was no longer working, so I decided to run a system restore (has been done in the past and lost nothing). System restore was successful,, but when computer was restarted all pics and docs were no where to be found. Comp and mouse works now. Was thinking pics could be lost or buried somewhere on the computer, just don't know where to start looking or how to go about it.....

if you cant find them on the hard drive they are gone.. the fbi etc can pull out deleted files.. as far as normal people having access to do that it cant be done. sometimes sys restore leaves the files, sometimes it doesnt.. i think you are SOL though

I FOUND THEM WOO HOOO
just installed picasa2 and it did a hole search of the comp and restored all my pics .

you sure after your system restore it booted in safemode? If that was the case then you just have to start it normally but you figured that out. We I get a lock up i just pull the power plug and some times when i reboot the mouse or Keyboard doesn't work. So I just keep rebooting till they do. Works for me. Glad you got it going now back your stuff up on a mem stick..