System crash and recovery help needed

Damned computer died Tuesday night and unbelievably I still had the system recovery disc in the basement.  I ran the recovery with the option where all my data files are saved but the apps are lost although I see a folder with the app names/shortcuts of what I used to have.  My HD has a capacity of 150g or so and right now it has free space of 5g so the other 130+ is the backup.  How do I reload all my apps and move the datafiles to the new my docs folders with only 5-10g of free space?  I'm pretty such my datafiles took up 75-100g with about 30-40 g for apps before the crash.  

I used a program called active file recovery to back up my backup file to my external HD.  I was thinking of re-running the system recovery but wiping everything (basically a format c:\ annihilation of the HD) and starting fresh.

Thx L.  I put everything on the external HD for now.  Just waiting for my next door neighbor's son in law to take a look (he's a programmer) before I reformat the whole thing.