Geek type help required
Printed From: The Fishing Website
Category: General Forums
Forum Name: Forum comments and feedback
Forum Description: Anything related to posting or running of the forum, check here
URL: https://www.fishing.net.nz/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11116
Printed Date: 10 Jun 2026 at 11:21am
Topic: Geek type help required
Posted By: obald
Subject: Geek type help required
Date Posted: 20 Oct 2005 at 6:42am
|
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. ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/ 
|
Replies:
Posted By: Jo.
Date Posted: 20 Oct 2005 at 6:51am
|
you can contact http://datarecovery.co.nz">Data Recovery What ever you do dont mess with it anymore as the files overwrite on the disk. The big question is do you know the cost of such an exercise? Its even less pretty than losing the data.I would hazard a guess that the actual folder has been moved not removed. Try doing a search for a known file and follow the footprint. ------------- Capitalisation is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.."http://www.peoplefirst.org.nz/">People First New Zealand |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 20 Oct 2005 at 3:35pm
|
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) ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: Tagit
Date Posted: 20 Oct 2005 at 3:45pm
| Obald - try talking to Computer Forensics based in downtown AK. These guys are about as good as it gets and specialise in data recovery. I once had to use them after a dodgy PC Service company in Red Beach re-formatted my hard disk and then reloaded the operating system and applications back on (without checking with me if it was OK to erase all my data!!!!). Supposedly my data should have been absolutely totaled, but I got back probably 75% of the valuable files. Be warned however, they are very good, and very expensive. |
Posted By: Rockhopper
Date Posted: 20 Oct 2005 at 3:50pm
|
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/">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 !! |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2005 at 9:07pm
All gone  For $180 my man says they have all been overwritten by my routine nightly defrag. Sometimes doesn't pay to be too tidy. I could send the hard disk to the mob Jo mentioned and for $1100 (not a typo) they might be able to rescue something - I don't think so. No viruses found and the only explanation proffered was those power outages during the lightning a few days back. If they occurred during a read/write sequence it is not a 'good thing' apparently - dunno and don't much care now. Thus as I type my entire stock of fishing/boating pics stands at a shot of an Henriques 38 Express and that stupid 8 foot pilothouse boat on the tray of a ute. To work - I have a CD of stuff from a bloke who lives in France, there's some still on the digital camera, I think I can rescue some off email attachments (not sure about that one) and I can get a few back from my repository in Photobucket. C'est la vie. A bit more careful about backups from here. ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: Trenta
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2005 at 9:33pm
|
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 |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2005 at 10:25pm
|
Thanks for the offer Trenta. I'm not doing bad at looking in all sorts of funny places and look like getting back about half from various sources. I might yet contact you for that utility. Mean while back to it  ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: Trenta
Date Posted: 21 Oct 2005 at 10:29pm
| Sure thing, just let me know. |
Posted By: Jo.
Date Posted: 22 Oct 2005 at 3:51pm
|
if we were closer I would have been happy to ghost whats left and then have a go, since having a similar episode (only everything was backed up) I have since been religious about referencing restore points. ------------- Capitalisation is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse.." and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse.."http://www.peoplefirst.org.nz/">People First New Zealand |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 25 Oct 2005 at 8:15am
|
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? ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: 45kg_puka
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 10:12am
|
always copy your files to a RE writable dvd, do a back up once a week and you wont have any problems. i have 400gig of data manly software windows xp 64bit etc etc to hard to replace and with backups, it will only back up whats changed not all of it so it wont take long to backup. |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 10:59am
|
What a nightmare from the past that all is.
No problem now as I have been a Windows free zone ever since that time. Four Macs reside at Obald towers (two more come for visits when daughters come home) and the problems outlined above are but a dim and distant memory - thank goodness. ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: Mr Bean
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 1:02pm
Imagine a world without virus's.......but wait there is and glad to hear you've had no problems in macland. Got 4 macs myself and just had to put XP on a parrallels partition for my wifes business.......I can't believe people willingly use an operating system so user unfriendly, intentionally difficult and tedious!!!! If you want to make sure all your computers are safe check out time capsual for wireless backup of all your macs 
|
Posted By: 45kg_puka
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 1:40pm
|
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. |
Posted By: obald
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 3:24pm
|
Haven't gone for Time Capsule (thought of it) but I have a 460 Gig Lacie connected to my main machine which runs Leopard (the other three are still OS X 10.4). Time Machine is the only use for that drive. I also have a .mac account (recently morphed into a MobileMe account for when I get my iPhone they presume) and for $99 per annum all my data is also backed up to Cupertino on a daily basis. To complete the Appleisation of my house I have an Airport Extreme as my wireless router and three Airport Expresses running iTunes from two separate computers to three sets of Stereo gear/wired speakers in the house. Oh, and there is an Apple TV in the main AV room - just waiting for the New Zealand iTunes store to get its act together and start selling/renting movies. I hope they are not waiting until we get full noise broadband 'cos I will then be in for a long wait. Fess up time. I do still have two XP boxes. One is the boat laptop which runs Maxsea and Global Mapper 8 and nothing else and the other is the Dell that was giving me so much grief three years ago. That has been reformatted and a clean install of XP put on it and it also just runs the navigation stuff. I agree wih Mr 100lb Puka - there are (unfortunately) some areas of software where you are pretty much forced to use Windows and although there are some Mac navigation programs around I'm afraid that is an area where Windows is in front. I couldn't give a rats about gaming and that is therefore not a consideration for me. ------------- Random musings on all sorts of things http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow - http://obaldnz.blogspot.com/
|
Posted By: 45kg_puka
Date Posted: 23 Jul 2008 at 5:22pm
|
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 |