I made a mistake and deleted a large part of my files. VERY IMPORTANT. The thing is it said the Recycle Bin is too small and that the files would immediately be deleted. At that point, I thought I was deleting a duplicate file and did.

Now I know my mistake! The thing is the deletion is very recent but file recovery programs can' t get most of it except some images and compressed files.

Please, is there a way to roll back the system to a few hours back, or even yesterday!?

System restore should do the trick:

Click

Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Restore

I don' t know anything about this stuff but I' ve heard, that in worst case scenarios, there are people who can restore pretty much everything ever stored on a harddrive, unless a special prgram was used to delete the files. Things that get deleted never get deleted for real because they always leave a magnetic trace on the disc. If no programs or whatever does the trick then you should probably ask someone in a computer store if they can help.

Duffman that will only work if you have a valid restore point. There is a way to recover files as the file is not " deleted" the space is only marked as being deleted. Try this site and follow the instructions and hopefully you should be ok.

http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php

Duffman that will only work if you have a valid restore point.

Yeah but doesn' t windows automatically make restore points every so often?

Yeah but doesn' t windows automatically make restore points every so often?

Windows xp ... and onwards create recover points quite often, usually after some program installation or weekly intervals. If it wasnt disabled.

Byakko, you should have a few recent restore points.

Ive not known xp restore points to create back up of data, only programs etc, perhaps i' m mistaken.

And yeah data is never truely deleted just the link to it is taken away. Couldn' t help you in restoring it though but there must be programs out there to do so.

System Restore won' t help here. It' s not like it can magically undo deletion of files. It saves you' re Windows and apps settings so that if you fuck up and your system goes screwy it can be restored to a working condition.

It doesn' t back up your files.

There are recovery programs but very few work properly and most won' t recover anywhere near 100% of the original folders etc.

The trick, and this is a killer, ...is if the data is important, ...back it up!

Hahaha, but seriously, Byakko, do you know what make of harddrive you have?

If it' s NTFS go HERE and get FINDNTFS.

Boot your system into DOS using a boot disk with the findntfs.exe file on it. Type FINDNTFS # 1 1 1 c:\recoverlog.txt files at the command prompt, replacing the " #" with the number of the hard drive you are reading from, ...which i' m guessing would be ' 1' .

If you want to create a text file version of the list then type C:\>findntfs 1 1 1 1 c:\recoverlog.txt files_

When you look through the list everything will be jumbled as hell but you should be able to find the document, file, folder or whatever. When you do scroll back up and find what directory it' s in.

Then type FINDNTFS 1 1 1 1 copy # (# being the directory number the file is located in). It' ll then copy those files into the FINDNTFS install directory.

System Restore won' t help here. It' s not like it can magically undo deletion of files

It done it for me, but then again that was a deleted program and I didnt use it tring to get files back..

System restore might not recover this file.
I have my SR turned off so i anything happens *sigh* fcuk it! and move on. No need for crying over spilled milk...*damn* milk is good!

Try a program called Active Undelete. It works.