Ok techies--I did something stupid. I ran system recovery with no back-up?

My daughter got my (her) computer so jammed up with spyware and unwanted programs and I was trying to clean it up-removing unwanted programs-running adaware- deleting old application files. well the screen went blank and the only page I could access was the set-up page. Maybe I read it wrong because I though it said there were 2 ways to run system recovery. 1) was to have back up discs of all your data files and pictures etc.(which stupidly I had never made). but it said I could run recovery a second way and it would save all of my old files in a separate partition. This is windows XP. Well needless to say--everything is gone-and I cant find it-I call Greed Squad- if I give them the Hard drive thay can probably recover most of my old pictures and doents--starting at 259.00!!!. Well I did take out the hard drive so I wouldn't overwrite anything that might be recoverable, and installed a new one. So does anyone know how I can get my stuff of the old drive-any good indy websit