With a virus and cleaning out, what has been lost can vary and some may not be fixable without a complete reinstall.  Its totally different than the old Win9X world. The Dell Recovery Partition (F8 at power on) will restore the PC to the original factory condition, but all user data (and user installed programs) will be gone.  You can backup user data to some other media such as discs or a USB flash drive so they can be restored after a reinstall.  Programs can't be backed up, they must be reinstalled.   There are some issues with using the Dell recovery partition and if certain items have changed on the hard drive (such as reinstalling with a Disc) and it won't work your only option is a complete clean install (reformat the hard drive and reinstall). You can try a reinstall with a Vista OS Disc over top of the existing install, but that will not fix any other programs that are not working.  Those programs will have to be reinstalled.  If its just that certain programs do not work, reinstalling the programs may take care of the problems, rather than a complete reinstall or reinstalling Windows. 
HI I am sorry if I put this post in the wrong area of the forum.  I am having some trouble with my Windows computer.  A while back I did a virusscan on my computer and my antivirus found a trojan so I took the files and put them in the virus chest and left them ttheir for a couple of weeks.  Then I thought I don't need these files anymore so I deleted them witch was really a very dumb thing to do.  So after that some programs do not work properly anymore.  I have a Samsung cell phone and I can not transfer my photos and videos off of my cell phone to my pc.  When I try to connect my cell phone to my transfer program an error comes up saying that I have an unregistered model of a cell phone connected and to search for bluetooth device.    The other stuff that I found as a result of deleting the wrong files because they had a virus are:  In the c drive some applications no longer work.  For example Windows Defender said to me when it was scanning it encountered a problem and so I let it do a quick scan and it found nothing bad.  I have also scanned my computer every week and It has not found anything such as a virus or trojan this far.  The other reason I am wanting help is because I would like some help from some to help me restore my computer back to regular state like before.  I was wondering is their away that I can repair Windows Vista home basic and not erase my entire hard drive and loose all my pictures and email addresses, and all my programs on my computer.  You see I had Windows 98 before I got this dell computer and if I had a problem I would just use that cd and repair windows 98 and it would not delete anything just would get everything back to normal.    I was also wondering can I do a restore from a previous back up and will that put files back on my computer or if I do delete a file off of my computer does that mean that that file is lost even in the restore files that I have on my computer.  some imfo that might be useful are:  Dell inspiron 531 Windows Vista home Basic I have the dvd to reinstall and can I repair windows using the dvd as well.  Thanks very much have a great day 
I need help I deleted some important files that I thought were not important 