[randheim]

It started with an error message on a black (DOS?) screen : <Windows root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe . We looked it up and it said a keyboard related error. We installed a new Flatron Slim monitor 2 weeks ago,but nothing else. We reinstalled the Acer Recovery disc and somehow the 80 GB hard drive partitioned itself in half. Up came a NEW clean 40GB set-up. Got on Internet and downloades something called "PC Inspector File Recovery". Worked thru some steps and couls SEE all the files but when we tried to upload/move them, nothing happened. Took drive to Data recovery guy who said we had "written back to the main drive and corrupted a lot of data. There were lots of files still there ( mostly pictures were overwritten) but he felt it wasn't worth the $500CAN to recover them. While I agreed, and really want the pictures that remain, in whole or part, I REALLY need some of those Word and Wordperfect8.0 files for tax purposes. Any ideas? Thanks Randy Toronto.

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Recovery media provided by the big names almost always wipe the disk.
Your Inspector File Recovery program scans the sectors of the drive and finds file fragments. Usually you can recover these, but it depends if all of the fragments of the file have been overwritten by other data or not. If it has, its gone for good, otherwise it may (or may not) be recoverable in full.

Whether the files are retrievable depends exclusively on whether the parts of the drive they were stored on have been overwritten. Usually recovery media repartitions and then reformats the drive before copying a whole bunch of data across to it. Therefore it may be possible that if there wasn't a lot of docs/programs added since you originally bought the machine, recovery has wiped them all out and what PC Inspector has found are the fragments which are missing but the key fragments (to recover the documents fully) are long gone.

[Neil Jones]

Recovery media provided by the big names almost always wipe the disk.
Your Inspector File Recovery program scans the sectors of the drive and finds file fragments. Usually you can recover these, but it depends if all of the fragments of the file have been overwritten by other data or not. If it has, its gone for good, otherwise it may (or may not) be recoverable in full.

Whether the files are retrievable depends exclusively on whether the parts of the drive they were stored on have been overwritten. Usually recovery media repartitions and then reformats the drive before copying a whole bunch of data across to it. Therefore it may be possible that if there wasn't a lot of docs/programs added since you originally bought the machine, recovery has wiped them all out and what PC Inspector has found are the fragments which are missing but the key fragments (to recover the documents fully) are long gone.