Chapter 13: Recovering Lost or Damaged Files and Applications

Overview

I’ve yet to find a Halloween horror tale or scary movie that equals the gut-wrenching terror one feels when a much-needed file is missing in action, so damaged it won’t open at all, or opens to a screen filled with unrecognizable garbage characters. Clearly, the old horror masters such as H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, and Mary Shelley never owned a PC.

You may experience such problems as an isolated incident (one important file won’t open), or as a cluster, where all files of a particular type appear to be damaged. You might also see that only files created on or near a specific date are affected.

Regardless of the situation, you’re in a mess. You feel you must either accept the loss of the file as gone forever or you’re stuck redoing hours’, days’, or even weeks’ worth of effort. Or you could sit and bemoan the fact that you never did that backup of your files you kept procrastinating.

None of those options sounds ideal, do they?

But you can sometimes turn a no-win scenario around by knowing some of the tricks of the trade in file recovery.

In previous chapters, you and I have discussed

• Your PC, its hardware, and its relationship with the Windows operating system and its installed applications

• How to protect your system and your data

• How to stabilize and resolve various problems you’re likely to experience—either as part of a disaster or as a situation that quickly degrades into one

Let’s tackle the vexing problem of file and application recovery since this is one of the most common, time-consuming, and aggravating issues you may face as a computer user.