Do you still have your laptop? Were you able to recover anything from the hard drive? My desktop crashed (mother board died) about a month ago, but the hard drive was OK, and I was able to buy a little $25 adapter to convert the old drive into a USB drive and transfer my files to my new desktop. I only lost a few really old games and printmaster type files that aren't compatible with Windows 7.
Although very limited, you can go to my signature and still download the old programs that my husband, Caskbill, created. Working on seeing if they can be updated and reworked currently....but they are free on entry levels.