System restore

it is not in the recycle bin and I tried recuva - found the file, but there was nothing in it. It was an excel spreadsheet that I had written to for 4 years and it is gone. I found a blank spreadsheet.

Hi Patti

Not sure if this will help at this stage but a program called Directory Snoop might help you. It is a paid-for application but you can trial it for 30 days I think for free and it is fully functional. The advantage it has over other recovery programs is that you can look at the contents of any particular file, even deleted ones, before recovery so this should help. If you run it and then look at the locations you have previously posted then you might see the relevant file and be able to recover it. You will have to run it as an administrator as it is quite powerful. It is basically a tool to look at the contents of any file but it does recovery quite well also although not probably for a large number of files. Very handy for the odd file.

It has two modules, one for NTFS and one for FAT, and probably you would use the NTFS one as this is the most common now - it will just give an error if the wrong one is chosen. It is easy to use, just run it and click on the drive letter for the drive or partition you need (Select Drive). It will show a tree directory structure through which you can then delve to find the right file. The contents of each selected file is shown in the lower box - and you can scroll through this. If you find the file then use the Undelete button at top left and follow the prompts - best to save this to a flash drive or other partition if you have one.

I won't go into the topic of backups (I noticed your other thread) but having all your data separate from the operating system and backed-up independently is usually much safer, especially when trying to recover deleted files.

Hope you have some luck getting your data back.

I installed it and scrolled through my C:\ and couldn't find it. They were either jpeg or file folders, not the .xls I needed. I didn't see anything that said monthly expenses. Any other ideas?

Jaidyn
In order to run the scannow, it says I have to be the administrator, which I am. It is supposed to be on a black screen, right, like the old time computers. I am going to attempt to give you a screen shot of the error when I try to restore.

Hi Patti

Were your comments about Directory Snoop? If so then this might help - run as before and click on drive. Click on the Filter button, then on Status in the list, choose deleted then OK and OK. This will list all deleted items so scrolling through might find something. Not had much need to use the Search function so can't really help with that. Should have stated earlier that deleted items show in red and normal files in black.

it sure installed a lot of stuff and I had a hard time figuring out how to get it to run.

Hi

You have to right click on install file and choose 'run as admininstrator' - sorry, it's some time since I had to install it. Real pain is Windows 7 in this regard when you need to install some software. Often you think you have something installed and just wonder why it is not working. CCleaner is the same I think.

I use avast