Can't open recovered files

For some reason I lost all files under My Documents, My Pictures etc.

Recuva found them under shadow copies, and I recovered them to an external hard drive.

But it's not possible to open any of them; Excel, Word, PDF, pictures, video, etc...

HELP!

As I undestand it the shadow copy system uses some sort of versioning method so that only changes to a file are stored. It may not be possible to recover complete files with Recuva from the shadow copies.