Almost everyone who accidentally loses a file or data in the computer will swear of a sickly feeling right from the stomach. A life’s work is lost and no matter what you do it seems that you can never get it back. You tried to press the back button to return to your last file but all you get is a message flashing on the screen that your file or data is unreadable, is unformatted or worse, is nowhere to be found.

Recover with Undo Function

Remember that when writing on a document the Undo function of the document can bring you at least a few steps back through the actions you made. If ever you accidentally lost important information that you have recently typed on the document, do not panic. Try the Undo function and you may retrieve the important information back. A word of caution, though, most notepad applications have an Undo function that brings you back a single step. This trap is very frustrating because you tend to undo and redo the same action you did on a file until you have realized that the information is already gone.

Use the Search Function

If the whole file is lost, the first thing to do is to be sure that you can never recover it. Before trying out any recovery softwares, try to look for the file first with the Search function. You can invoke the Search function from the Start bar or from the View tab. Remember to select “All files and folders” as well as all the hard drives connected to the computer. For Windows Vista, you can invoke the Search function from the Start and by clicking the dropdown arrow beside the Advanced Search option, you can look for recently modified files by selecting the “Date Modified.”

Use File Recovery Applications

If the file seems lost, you have another chance. It is a good thing that data and files leave digital imprints that specialized software or applications can recover. There are undelete utilities available from the Internet that can help you recover your data. The free sharewares PC Inspector File Recovery and FreeUndelete can help you recover files from your PC while the Data Doctor Recovery can help you recover files from your USB driver. Unfortunately, teh Data Doctor Recovery costs about US$ 49 but it has a free-trial evaluation period.

Use Data Recovery Tools

Accidentally clicking “Yes” when asked if you want to reformat your drive may be a long shot for recovery but it can be done but with a price. For recovering data from reformatted drives, you need a data recovery utility with a higher horsepower. There is the File Scavenger from QueTek worth US$ 49. For more serious data recovery, Easy Recovery Professional from Kroll Ontrack will assist you with a high-powered recovery of data as well as repair tools. Unfortunately, this software packs about US$ 500.

Get Professional Help

Recovering files from a dead or worned-out drive is almost near-impossible. A burnt-up hard drive will definitely crash along with its saved files. To prevent your files from going history, immediately retrieve the files and transfer them to another storage device. For damaged files, you can recover them by asking for professional help, for example from DriveSavers.

Back-Up to be Sure

For those lucky ones who have never experienced losing data, the first thing to do to prevent future accidents and face this dilemma is to avoid losing data and observe the rule of back-up. Backing-up data and files is a sure way to avoid the frustration and disappointment when losing important documents in the PC. Always store an important file or document to at least two storage device.

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pc wizard

Just like a computer processor that crashed either because of old age or because of overload, your Windows Operating System will also experience its share of ups and downs. You will definitely feel frustrated at times when upon turning on the computer, the screen will turn blue and bits of unrecognized codes will flash on the screen, almost instantly, the computer screen will turn black and will try to restart. Restarting is futile because it will always end up crashing and you have to watch it all over again like a vicious cycle.

Beat That System Crash

There are many possible causes of system crashes. For example, a low virtual memory can result to a system crash. If it is not resolved immediately, the system will soon degrade to such a point that the system will not be able to restart again. If your system crashed and you do not know how to fix it, the following are some of the things that may be able to help you:

Upon restart, go to Safe Mode by pressing the function key F8. Almost all Windows Operating System such as Windows 2000, XP and Vista have this Safe Mode option. Select the Last Known Good Configuration from the Advanced Options menu and then press Enter. This option will upload the last successful configuration of the system.

Another option for Windows XP and Vista user is to go back to the Advanced Options Menu to select Safe Mode. The option runs a bare version of Windows on a limited number of services and drivers. If the Operating System starts, it means that one of the drivers is the problem. Try to isolate the problem using the System Configuration Utility. The Help support page will be able to help you troubleshoot the problem.

Repair Your Damaged System

If you still have your installation CD with you, try to repair the damaged files instead. Doing this will retain your original files and the CD will only repair as necessary. In the “Welcome to Setup” screen, do not press “R” for repair yet, press the F8 function key and enter R for a Repair-Install. Remember not to the ESC key or all your settings will be swept clean.

If Windows XP has its repair installation utility, Window’s Vista also has its “repair your Computer” option in the Advanced Boot Options menu. After this option is selected, run the Startup repair from the Systems Recovery Options menu. For more help regarding this repair, see this page windows help.

Using the System Restore Utility

Windows XP and Windows Vista both have System Restore utilities. A System Restore utility program lets you return to a previous time when the computer is still working okay. The operating system automatically restore some points such that the user can decide to use System Restore anytime. For Windows Vista and XP, users just need to click the Start button, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools and click on System Restore.

For Windows Vista, system restore can be also invoked by typing the keyword system restore in the Start button. User only needs to to click “Choose a different restore point” then click Next. A list of restore points is available. For WIndows XP, select the “Restore my computer to an earlier time” tab and click on Next. A calendar will be shown with bolded dates indicating the days of saved restore points. You can scroll back to earlier months for all days of saved points.

Windows Vista also has this unpopular restoration process. It can be invoked from a command line with the command Bootrec. Windows Vista users do not have to go through the installation process because this restoration tool is powerful enough to be able to repair start-up problems.

Something Is Still Wrong

If after you have reinstalled the software or you were able to fix the problem of your computer system, you can also do some troubleshooting with a number of tools. For example, after a crash, your computer system may become slower than when it used to. To troubleshoot the cause of this problem, you must be able to check the SMART status of your hard drive. A good system information tool, PC Wizard 2007, can be found from pc wizard to do this.

Another option is to check the manufacturer of your hard drive. You can easily get a free checking tool from the manufacturer of your hard drive.

Observe a Good Habit

Windows Vista has a great back-up tool called Complete PC Back-up. This tool captures the general state of the operating system like an image. Everything on your hard drive will be copied and stored such that when a disaster will happen, you can go back to the system image-saving that you did. Note that it can not restore currently opened applications.

Also under the hood of Windows Vista, a reliable tool called Reliability Monitor has a list of all occurrences of system crashes and problems on your applications and programs.

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A password is required to be unique and so the user usually forgots the password that he sets. If you are using Windows XP and you have forgotten your log-in password, you can bypass the log-in by going to the Safe Mode.

Recover Lost Password

Restart the PC and press the function key F8 just before the Windows Operating System starts. A log-on screen complete with icons for existing user names will be displayed and these icons include the Administrator. By logging into the Administrator account but also leaving the password blank. Let Windows run and go to Control Panel. By selecting User Accounts, you can reset a password for any account. This is only applicable with Windows XP since Windows Vista has disabled its Administrator account so byapssing the log-in in a Windows Vista is impossible.

If you really need to recover a lost password, try Password Recovery Programs such as Advanced Office Password Recovery from Elcomsofts for only US$ 49. The Mail Passview application will be able to recover passwords from Outlook, Eudora and other e-mail program.

Recover a Product Key

The product key is essential especially if you need to reinstall an Operating System or application. Using Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder will be able to tell you of the product key as long as the application is still installed in the computer.

Recover Lost Image Files

As if losing files is frustrating enough, try losing images or snapshots of a birthday or anniversary event. The once-in-a-lifetime moment is lost forever just because the digital memory chip of your camera crashed or a whole folder was accidentally deleted by a niece or nephew. How do you get all those precious moments back?

There is hope with the image recovery softwares available. You can try out the PhotoRescue software from DataRescue, Image Rescue from Lexar, and RescuePro from SanDisk. These softwares have a rate of recovery of 4 out of 5 photos from the memory when the images were accidentally deleted. On the other hand, if the images were erased, for example from a Macintosh computer, a 3 out of 5 success rate can be observed. These image recovery softwares, however, can not recover images or photos handled using the in-camera format option. They explained that cameras replace the image files with binary zeros and the data becomes unrecoverable.

There are free utilities online such as the Digital Photo recovery of Art Plus and Smart Recovery of PC Inspector. These utilities do a good work on JPEG, RAW and TIFF files.

Repair Damaged Word and Excel Files

You can repair damaged Microsoft Office applications by choosing the Open and Repair option from the right side of the Open button. If, however, the application seems damaged, you can repair it using the Control Panel. Select Add or Remove Programs in XP and instead of removing the file, click on Change. There you will find the option of either a Repoair or Reinstall. Choose Repair.

Recover Data from Mobile Phone

The SIMCon program or the SIM Card Data Recovery application can help you retrieve valuable data from your mobile phone. These application are only US$ 99 and US$ 69, respectively.

Recover a Network Connection

The Network Magic utility, which costs about US$ 40 can display the entire network. The utility displays the devices that are available and the kind of connections. Users will even know the IP address of each element in the network. This utility program can help in troubleshooting as well as in configuring data.

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