Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
I need help BAD! I lost a 10 page paper. I know the data must still be on my disk but I can't find it.
Here's what happened. I had my Word document saved in a folder on my USB "thumb" drive. I cut and paste that whole folder into "My Documents" on my HD. I already had an older version of that same folder in My Documents, so it asked me if I wanted to replace it. I said yes. However, when I tried to open my document it was the old version, rather than the new one (a diffrence of about 4 pages worth of work). So I went to the Edit>Undo Move function. It undid alright. Now I have no folder, no paper in either disk!
I have used a file recovery program (PC Inspector) to search both my HD and my thumb drive, but could only find the folder (no files inside). I'm desparate. I have a grade riding on this stupid thing. I NEED THAT PAPER BACK!!!
Help.
0 
Bean,
Hi. I was using Windows Explorer windows. Had MY DOCUMENTS open along with a window for the E: drive, which I opened from MY COMPUTER. Why do you ask?
Can you help?
Dave
0
G'day,
Did Word save a *.bak file?? Do a search on your disk for this type.
It should be on the disk unless you have overwritten it; in which case if you are lucky not to have overwritten this new available space, you might be able to use a low-level restore programme and pick out the chunks of text.
Good luck,
Elric
0
Dave,
I created a word.doc in a folder on my slave drive. I also created a folder (the same name ) on my C: drive..I COPIED and pasted the D: folder to the C: folder...It didn't ask to replace,instead it just created the D: folder, IN my C: folder...
Maybe someone will come along with the answer to your problem..I'll still dig in some more..If you remember the name of the folder you pasted, try the FIND and maybe it will tell you where it is...Likely not being you said the folder was gone...
Still thinking...beansoup
0
Elric,
Thanks. If you're talking about Word back up files, I already checked my backup folder and my TEMP folder. No go. These were not saved because the document was not open at the time that I lost the files.
I did what you suggested, though, but nothing came up that was modified today--all old stuff.
Thanks anyway. Any other ideas?
0
Bean,
Thanks for your help. yeah, I ran a search for the folder, but all I got were shortcuts from the recent folder.
It's been about 3 and a half hours since I lost the document. I'm think I'm becoming numb to the fact that it's gone permanently.
UNLESS... when I ran a search with my file recovery program, it found a number of recovered Word files in the disk clusters. I tried to open each and every one of these files, but Word did not recognize any of them.
???
0
Dave,
Just guessing, but I think PC insp renames the files.That's why Word didn't read them..
Still thinking..Have you tried the recycle bin?
beansoup
0
Yeah,
The files were renamed, but they were still .doc extensions. I think the data in the files were corrupted. This indicates to me that none of them were my lost file, since it would not have been corrupted yet.
Nothing appeared in the recycle bin, because it was not a typical delete operation, but an "undo move" function. Windows tends to by-pass the bin for operations like these.
ARRRGGHH!
I'll check again in the morning for more posts. Thanks again.
0
G'day,
Yes, I know the pain. I did the same thing many years age with a Wordstar document. I used a low level recovery tool that picked out sectors of the disk - a 51/4" floppy (1024 btyes at a time , I think). It was slow and painful but I got back 95% of it (in pieces that is).
If you can just find the ascii text and save it somewhere, you could use a text editor to put it all back again. I would hold off on using Word to read anything since there would be a lot of corruption. Just use wordpad.
Good luck,
Elric
0
Elric
Do you think a scanreg /restore would help bring the PC back, to where Dave could try something else? Just digging:-)
beansoup
0
Hi Dave.
If you want I will send you a small zip file to recover the program that you cut from your thumb drive. Just post back and let me know. Have a nice day.
0
G'day,
Unfortunately not beansoup, I don't think putting back the registry to a previous state will help since I don't think anything will have changed. I see where your coming from, though, but the only thing the registry is interested in is references to files and programmes. We are looking for the actual file itself.
However, Oldhobo has a possible solution, so we can let Dave run with that and wish him good luck.
regards,
Elric
0
Hi Oldhobo,
I'm not sure what you mean. I didn't cut a program from my thumb drive, but a folder which contained a few documents. Is taht what you mean? If you think your recovery program will work better than the one I'm using, I'd love to try it. Do you think that the quality of recovery programs differ, or all they all pretty much the same? I'll try it, though. Thanks.
In the mean time I'll try Elric's idea about using Notepad instead. I think I tried that with some of them, but I wouldn't really know if it would work unless I check all of them, now will I?
Thanks for all the help!
Dave
0
I've been able to open up a recovered version of the document (whether it's an older version or the most recent, I don't know) with WordPad, but it is all encoded. No text remnants are recoverable. Does any one know if there is a way to decode this back into text?
0
Hey all,
Problem solved! Here's what I did. Last night I checked the application data folder for backups, but there were none, since I had already closed Word before I tried to move the files. And I used the file recovery app to look in the folders where I had saved the files. Also, nothing recoverable was there. However, right when I was about to give up I had one more idea, and I should have thought of it last night, it was so simple: I ran the file recovery app again, but this time looked for the lost backup files (since I knew they had to be there before I closed Word). Lo, and behold, there it was!
Thanks everyone for your ideas. Now I need to try to figure out how all this happened in the first place. When I tried to reproduce the problem on my laptop (XP), the Edit menu did not make Undo available after a cut/paste move, like my 98se did. Glitch? Dunno.
Well, off to work. Thanks all. You were great sports to try to figure this out for me!
Happy Holidays and new year.
0
Beansoup ..
This is not terribly germaine here, but I think you're a little confused about what SCANREG does.SCANREG /BACKUP does not backup anything except the Registry items(System.DAT, User.DAT, System.INI and Win.INI).
Therefore, a SCANREG /RESTORE can only put these puppies back. It will not restore any deleted software or such. It's NOT anything like a backup except for these files.
SCANREG /FIX will repair any registry inconsistencies and fix any internal broken links.
Just a FYI ..
Don
0  |
 |
 |
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
