poorly pc

[booboo67]

hi
afriend of mine has had problems with their pc whilst trying to install a wireless router. he didnt know what was going wrong so for some reason done a recovery on the pc to get it going again. i think he is running windows xp. he phoned me about an hour ago and said he has done about 5 recovery's on the pc now and he's lost all his files. i will be going over there tomorrow to see if i can help before we take it to a shop. he said all his files (my documents etc) have all gone into a folder that when he opens it its in binary.
any ideas what he's done so i can give him some info on how to sort it
thanks

[Ethel]

Try right clicking on a document and 'open with'...

He should have an idea of which program to use to read it properly.

Not sure if it will work, but it won't harm.

[booboo67]

thanks ethel
i'll get him to try it