Lost files.. Please tell me I can find them

[Jimma]

Hi Guys

i am really hoping that this isn't a complete lost cause and someone is going to be able to help me. I have used this forum a number of times to research issues I have had and always found the answer but this is my first post so at present I am optimistic.

I was using Illustrator CS5 with a number of documents open when I had to leave my office to deal with a screaming daughter. I was then a little distracted before I managed to get back to my laptop. To my horror my laptop had installed some updates and automatically restarted. And you guessed it my files were gone. I know I know I should have been periodically saving them as I worked on them and stupidly enough I had with one but not the others.

I quickly checked the recycling bin to see if a back copy was there as I had heard that this is sometimes the case. I did find one document that was modified at the correct time and date but with some random name. I tried restoring it to find out what it was and now have no idea where it has been restored to.

Where would it be? Could this be the document I am looking for? If not can I get them back?

Please tell me there is hope.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Maguscreed]

How to recover unsaved Photoshop work | Photoshop CS5

I think that method is basically unchanged in the newer versions.

 

[Jimma]

An autosave would certainly have helped me avoid this situation which is clealry my own stupid fault but unfortunately not going to help me get the documents back.

So pissed with myself.

 

[Maguscreed]

If I knew where it stored it's temp files we might have been able to track them using recuva but I don't have that information

 

[Jimma]

I am lost mate, I have been all over this F***ING laptop and can't find anything resmembling it. Tried searching with a number of different fliters and either get a ton of files of which nune seem to be anything helpful or I get nothing at all.

 

[Maguscreed]

Well have some patience it's possible someone has a fix for you and just hasn't seen the thread yet.

 

[Jimma]

Chhers buddy, fingers crossed.

 

[JaidynM]

Hey Jimma,

The following link may shed some light on your problem. Give it a read.
How to Recover Illustrator Files If My Computer Crashes | eHow.com

Hope this helps,
Jaidyn

 

[boohbah]

i know its shutting the door once the horse has bolted but to avoid this happening again change your updates settings to download but ask .
start search / windows update/ change settings
good luck with your photoshop prob, i cant help with that im afraid.

 

[Imperfect1]

It may be too late for this, but have you tried a System Restore to the most recent date just before the Updates were downloaded? If that doesn't work, have you tried uninstalling the Updates that caused the problem?

 

[Golden]

Hi Jimma,

A long shot here, but maybe we get lucky : have you tried looking in your Temp folders on your drive? Is there an "options" or "tools" menu in Illustrator? Does it perhaps tell you where temporary files might be kept?

As MagusCreed alluded too, we could try to use Recuva to see if these temporary files still exist on the hard disk. It may be worth a phone call/email to the makers of the software to find out where temporary files might be kept?

Regards,
Golden

 

[whs]

When the automatic updates were made, a restore point was created. Although you cannot recover the files with a system restore (because that only restores system files), you can find them in the restore point (shadow) with Shadow Explorer. Here is a little video tutorial that I have done a long time ago explaining how to go about it. It is on the Vista forum but it works the same for Win7: Recover lost files with Shadow Explorer