has anyone sucessfully managed to recover data from a pc after the drive was reformatted & windows reinstalled (by accident I should say!) If so, can you tell me where you had it done please?

Doesn't sound good.  I have just had a new hard drive put in and to recover the data from the old drive would have meant sending it to a company that specialises in doing just that.  Have you got a PC World or similar who you could ask?