Restoring without Losing

Recently I had the bright idea of going through the programs on my computer that I never use and I uninstalled a lot of programs. Since then my lap top hasn’t worked correctly. It won’t go on stand by and it won’t connect to any wireless internet connection. I talked to a friend of mine who said that I would have to use the Microsoft Restore disk that came with the computer to return it to the way I got it, but that doing this would cause me to lose everything that’s already on the computer. I thought I had heard of a way to do this without losing everything but I’m having trouble finding it when I look online. Does anyone know of a way for me to fix my computer without losing all of my files?