I know Vista doesn’t install itself easily. Something must have happened, that’s for sure. What software you have used to recover your data? One of the data recovery software I know is Salvage Data recovery Software for windows. My friend used the software and got his data back. Few days back I tried to recover the data of my office system, which I lost accidentally while formatting and it worked well. Try with their software. I think their site name is salvage data.
All the best.