Find Lost Photos

I had Photoshop Elements 10 installed on a computer that crashed. I need to know how to find out if my photos were backed up in Elements 10.  I thought I was backing them up in Elements 10, but I'm not sure.  I have a friend who was able to recover most of what was lost, but the photos I had edited in Elements 10 are gone.  They were very important to my family.  I tried re-downloading my software, but I can't load discs 2 & 3, and I can't sign in to it.  Then I tried downloading the free trial of Photoshop Creative Cloud, but I can't find them there.  Can ANYONE help me????