There is a small chance you can get some pictures back. But not likely.
The system recovery from computer manufactures puts the system back to the way it was when you bought it. It wipes everything out.
This is why when I redo a customer machine I normally do away with the recovery option to keep them from doing it. To many people believe it will fix the system while leaving everything there.
But here is how the recovery of deleted files works.
On a hard drive you have millions and millions of sectors. Think of a sector as a file drawer. It can only hold so much before it uses more drawers.
When a file is deleted only the information of the file is removed. The data is still there. but that sector is marked as ok to write to.
So as long as nothing over writes that data you can recover it.
But many files cover tons of sectors. So the more the system is used the more sectors get written over. So the chances get lower and lower of recovering a file.
I had a custom format their memory card in their camera. Lost all the pictures. Told her do not take any pictures and bring it to me. I did a file recovery and got them all back, because nothing got over written.
There isn't many free programs to help with this, a lot of them charge and there is no guarantee.
http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/recovery-software/Take this as a good chance to teach him how important it is to keep a backup off the machine itself. Like to an external drive. Sometimes a person has to lose their files before they will listen
Free backup program I use and put on my customers machines.
http://www.fbackup.com/Shane
