Not often that this board doesn't come up with the goods in all sorts of areas.

Anyone know of a data recovery/geek type service in Auckland? My entire 'My Pictures' folder in 'My Documents' has done a runner. Nothing else - rest of the PC running fine. Hundreds of pictures (mainly of fish, boats and lures)are hiding - I'm sure they're not irrevocably gone (I bloody well hope they're not.....) Go to Adobe Photoshop Album and it displays the thumbnails but says the actual files are missing.

I've 'System Restored' to a couple of weeks back (when they were still definitely still around), run CHKDSK /r and run all the virus scanners with up to date definitions on I can find and no progress whatsoever. I now need help bigtime.

It's not pretty. Looks like viral disease - a friendly little number that just wipes your 'My Pictures' folder for a bit of fun. It's a variant of one that wipes your entire 'My Documents' folder so what a lucky chap I am. I had my letters etc. backed up - but my photos? No real point- wrong. The main machine is in having it all sorted and most of it stands a good chance of being recovered.

Came home via MagnumMac. Typing this on daughter's iBook (yum yum) via dial up (yuk yuk)

Obie, the documents are probably still there on your machine. When a file is deleted , the first character of the file name is replaced by a "blank" character hiding the rest of the data friom the file syste. There are tools that let you "replace" that missing character and recover the file.

I've used this mob in a professional capacity and there stuff does work.

http://www.officerecovery.com/freeundelete/

Download and run it from floppy if you have one.

Interestingly most digital cameras use the same technique and can have files recovered in the same way. So be careful who you lend your camera to !!

Obald,

I have an office recovery utility that may help?  It is pretty good at restoring lost documents, so it may work on your files.

If you want to have a try, PM me and I will email it through.

Cheers

Trent

Sure thing, just let me know.

I've come that close to divorcing Bill Gates this past few days. Made a fair fist of picture recovery, got myself a bit better organised on the backup front and every thing was looking sweet.

Then display goes on the blink and I saw the first 'Blue Screen of Death' I've seen for a couple of years. Graphics drivers or graphics card gone tits up this azure portent of doom informs me. Please, pretty please, let it be the former. Into 'Safe Mode' and download the latest Nvidia drivers for my card. Except you can't 'cos you can't get on the Net in 'Safe Mode'. Hmmm. Cunning plan. Download the drivers onto my daughters iBook (30 Mb at dialup speed - yawn), drop them onto a USB key and install them off there on the PC. Will it work?  New drivers install no problem and was I feeling the ducks guts in the geek department. Boot the PC in 'Normal Mode' and............. no improvement, another 'Blue Screen of Death'. Bugger. Go and buy new graphics card and all sorted. I don't need this crap - computers are a tool and not a 'work in progress'. You've got one more chance you little ratbag and then I'm running off with Steve.

Anyone want to buy a little bit broken Nvidia GE Force FX5200?

What a nightmare from the past that all is.

macs are the bomb dude, but remember 90% of of software is written for pc
and most people play games and do other things as well. a mac is fast dam fast but they are and will always be for business use only. not many games are out there for mac's
mac's was  never designed as a gamers or for personal stuff.
since bill gates stole the idea from windows NT and based his platform we have now on the NT system. if your going to say mac's wont get virrii your wrong there are some out there just like there are some for linux as well. nothing is safe from them, like i said to thoes lamers back when irc was just starting to catch on, they will have virii's in emails soon enough as enbedded and attachemnts, and sure enough i was right, fact is mac's are a specialized computer. we all know xp home edition is crap. 9 x's outa 10 it can be traced to the hardware not the OS playing merry hell with the pc. either not fast enough or older pc. i run dual boots and the best proformence i get from the net is windows xp 64 bit edition or vista i have a high spec'ed pc for what i want to use it for. i need the 12gig cpu i need the 8gig memory i need 500gig hdd and the 42" lcd screen and the 1 gig video card cause i use it to play games and do work with, im into land mapping so need the speed etc. so all in all mac's and pc's are each built for what the end user needs from it and use it for. end note bill gates need to stop putting software out and getting end users to find the bugs for him, what does he pay his programmers for???its there jobs to find the bugs not us.
 

obald im not saying they only for gaming, but in general terms most are used for gammers
there is an add on for mac's that allow mac's to run pc programs and im pretty sure there is a hybrid that one can install on a mac and use windows programs full time on it.  there is and will always be the war between mac and pc, the only thing i have found is that my programs run faster better on the 64bit xp than 32 bit. if i had the chance to get the latest mac i would just for business use. i use maxsea and find it pretty much sweet as. but i am not on a 30 ft vessel so have no use for the xtra features, so i just use the chart plotter instead for my fishing im a puka droper not a snapper or marlin hauler. but i am gearing up for marlin thoe at some stage