Help. I have been having some problems with power DVD so today I reinstalled this application. After install I realised to my horror that all my photographs in my Documents folder had vanished. This is my whole collection of all my time in Thailand, people, places and friends. I will be absolutly devastated if I cannot recover these. I know that they wil still be on the hard drive but as XP is not dos based I am at a loss starting any sort of recovery process. Please help if you can I am open to suggestions.

I am not connected to the internet on the PC in question so I am pretty sure it is not a virus problem, although it has been acting a little buggy, but that could be down to me no defragging for a while. I tried system restore to no avail.

I noticed an idwlog file that was showing a lot of repeated attempts to connect to a server not sure what this was not sure if it is connected to the problem.

Thanks in advance

The Toaster

Recover My Files

I've used this utility before and its quite good. I didnt backup files and I had issues, so like you photos were the big deal for me. The demo will allow you to see what you can recover.

If you haven't written any data to the area where the files used to reside, then usually they are fairly easy to recover. You just need any of a number of undelete programs. Do a search, at your local software booth or Google.

cool thx guys, will be down pantip in the morning

Have you tried retruning to a previous system restore point perhaps? If that don't help then some recovery software as suggested should.

Toastwars

Just a quick note for you.

Do not use the computer where the lost files are located to download anything, also do not install any new programs onto your computer as you have a very good chance of overwriting the files you wish to recover.Any recovery software should be run from a floppy or external storage device. Unfortunetly the majority of recovery programs require that the software is on the same harddrive as the files you wish to recover, which is fine if you have it already installed, but useless otherwise.

Obviously no defrags, scandisks or backup's as these will all write to your harddrive and may overwrite the data.

If your harddrive is partitioned then it is possible to to write to the partition which does not have the data you wish to recover.

If you are still unable to recover your photo's post again and I will see what programs I can dig up for you which can do the job.

Toastwars

Just a quick note for you.

Do not use the computer where the lost files are located to download anything, also do not install any new programs onto your computer as you have a very good chance of overwriting the files you wish to recover.Any recovery software should be run from a floppy or external storage device. Unfortunetly the majority of recovery programs require that the software is on the same harddrive as the files you wish to recover, which is fine if you have it already installed, but useless otherwise.

Obviously no defrags, scandisks or backup's as these will all write to your harddrive and may overwrite the data.

If your harddrive is partitioned then it is possible to to write to the partition which does not have the data you wish to recover.

If you are still unable to recover your photo's post again and I will see what programs I can dig up for you which can do the job.

I turned it off so I can maintain the partitions, thanks mate you are all real stars, let you know how i get on

tried a restore point but to no avail.

Hence recover my files - small enough to download to a floppy and runs from it!

...

Edited March 3, 200521 yr by katana

I suppose you can simply restore it using data recovery tools such as Active@ undelete or Uneraser(DOS). It worked great for me and really never failed before. That should help indeed.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

http://www.uneraser.com/

Try this

http://www.z-a-recovery.com/digital-image-recovery.htm

works on hard drives as well as camera media.

There was a thread on this a few months ago and I copied the following from one of the replies - unfortunately I do not have the Link so cannot credit the original Poster of this information:

QUOTE

Earlier this year I clipped and saved an article out of the 'Database' section of the BKK post, just in case I should have a similar catastrophe. Bottom line is that the writer took his h/drive to Pantip Plaza and upon asking for anyone doing data recovery, it was suggested he go to a store called "Room Service (Room 411-4114) on the 4th floor of Pantip. Room Service sells old computers & components and the owner is called the 'professor'. The writer was told the cost would be 400-Bt. In short, all of the writer's H/drive data was recovered...but it his hard drive was not able to be reformatted so could not again store the recovered data. The writer bought a new 160GB h/drive for 4900-Bt, transferred the data and all is now well.good luck...

UNQUOTE

Patrick