Files And Folders In C Drive Are Not There

I restarted Windows XP one day, thinking nothing of it, however, at the boot up screen, it gave me the message that one of my files was corrupt and couldn't start. No biggie, this has happened to me before, I know how to fix it. However, when I popped in the XP Pro boot disk, it gave me the option to do a system restore (I accessed this by going to install Windows XP, and then selecting the operating system I had currently installed to recover). I chose to do this, thinking it would save me time. It did in one respect, in that I can now start Windows XP, the only problem is that it's now as if I completely reinstalled Windows i.e. all my files and programs are gone. However, when I open my C: drive, all my files are there, I can see them and access some of them, however, others, such as My Documents, I can't access, although they have to be somewhere on my computer, because my C drive is still filled to capacity. I tried searching for files and folders to find some of my documents to no avail. I tried doing a system restore, however, all the restore points I created are no longer there.