And running chkdsk will not 'find' your photos, that's used for checking the integrity of your hard drive.
To find your photos simply click the 'folder' icon on your taskbar or push the windows+E keys to open up explorer from where you should be able to simply navigate to your photos location (usually the "pictures" folder unless you've been putting them somewhere else).
(Though if you have Windows 8 and not Windows 8.1 you will have to click on the 'desktop' tile then press the windows+x keys to get a menu up.)
No need to muck around with getting rid of Windows 8 or going through the steps above if they don't make sense, simply go here:
And download and run the free program called 'start 8' and it will make your computer usable again. It's $5 if you want to keep it. It is a MUCH simpler solution to the Windows 8 problem than anything else. Then when Windows 10 comes out just upgrade to that, it 'might' be free for those who have to suffer under Windows 8 but MS hasn't stated that just yet.
Has Windows 8 always been on your PC or did you do an 'upgrade'?
