I have had this laptop for a good decade or so. It's really old, and my cousin installed something when a virus was installed; the laptop was later formatted and changed to Windows Live XP Super. I have priceless photos on this laptop and wanted to know if data recovery is possible. I couldn't get system recovery or any third-party software for data recovery running on this laptop. I also couldn't access the panel for previous versions. Is there any method to try to recover data from this Dell?
Daisy· Answered on Dec 12, 2025
As you said, your laptop has been formatted and attacked by the virus; simultaneously, you can not run any third-party software for data recovery on this laptop and even can not access the panel. In case of that, try EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, which can create a bootable disk to help you recover photos from formatted Dell Inspiron 6400 that could not run as usual.
But at the beginning, you must prepare another healthy USB to create a bootable disk. The following is what you need to do next:
Step 1. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard, click 'Crashed PC Recovery', and 'Go to Recover'.
Step 2. Select the USB to create the bootable drive and click 'Create'.
Step 3. Connect the bootable disk to your Dell laptop and enter BIOS to change your computer boot sequence. For most Windows users, when they restart their computer and press F2 to enter BIOS. And then, you should set it to boot the Dell from 'Removable Devices', a bootable USB disk in the current situation, beyond Hard Drive - press 'F10' to save and exit.
Step 4. After booting from the bootable disk, select the drive where your photos are stored and click 'Scan' to discover your lost data. Before clicking 'Recover', please preview the files and save them to a safe location.
Warning: While creating a bootable disk, all data saved in the USB drive will be erased by EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Back up data beforehand.
If all these steps fail to fix your current issue, contact EaseUS data recovery services for other technical solutions.
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