Recovering lost files?

dtokez · 4 Jul 2012 at 14:26

Hi all, yesterday my missus rang me and said her workmate had an error with Vista, and it prompted to insert the disc. She had put the disk in but it was not booting from it - I instructed to change the boot order in the bios to boot off the disk.

Today I get a call to say it worked but everything has gone - photos, uni work etc.. This doesn't surprise me as she must have either re-installed the OS or restored it.

My question is - is it possible to recover any of the files? I think they should be on the disk still unless they have been overwritten but is there a way to get at them?

Thanks all

Dano · 4 Jul 2012 at 14:59

There are several viruses that will set the hidden flag on all user files so they appear to have gone, turn on viewing of hidden files and folders to check that this is not the case, otherwise Recuva will do a reasonable job of file recovery, but make sure you use it from a different drive and do not recover to the target drive.

bledd · 4 Jul 2012 at 15:05

Tell her to restore from her backup

Failing that, as Dano says, turn on hidden files (and system files), then manually look in the C:\Users\ folder, they may even be under a different user profile.

ChocolateStarfishRammer · 4 Jul 2012 at 15:06

DiskGenius

lurkio · 4 Jul 2012 at 15:20

first off DONT switch the PC on , the more it is on the less likely u will be able to recover anything

You will need to take out the HD out and attach it to another machine
then use some file recovery software and see if it can find any of the files you need

bignev72 · 4 Jul 2012 at 15:21

Or if Windows has been re-installed then her old windows installation (and thus her user files) will be within windows.old folder on the C:\ drive

dtokez · 4 Jul 2012 at 16:27

Thanks guys, I have said to get the PC to me so I can whip out the drive and see what's what.

I will let you all know what I find out when I get it!

BobbyDsl · 5 Jul 2012 at 11:24

It happens at times that we knowingly delete some files permanently and later realize that they were important. It is possible to recover such files easily by using third party software of Windows disk recovery. Kernel for Windows data recovery software is capable of recovering files that were deleted long back and even the files deleted due to formatting, damage or deletion of the partition.