Hi, i have only just joined this website, im not sure how to use it properly... i need help i have windows vista and recently i accidently deleted photos and somehow they have been deleted from my computer from the recyle bin too.. the only way i can find them is through my search index on vista.. when i go search and look up a file that i had on my computer before they still come up, however when i click on the actual photos all that comes up is a message saying: Photo gallery can not open this photo because it might have been deleted or is in a location that is not avaialbe. The photo thumbnails come up but the photo keeps saying that? someone please help me. my email is <snip>.. im not sure how to use this website. Thanks x

Hi, I also need it!! any suggestions?

Try downloading Recover my Files or Handy Recovery. They should help you get back some of your pictures. It will be a long process though. But I have used these programs to get back pictures after a format so they should work for you.

The first thing you need to do is STOP writing things to your hard disk. Once a file or picture is deleted, although it is not available, it is still on your computer. But it is in a position to be overwritten. So that means no more downloading music, putting pictures on, adding ANYTHING else to your hard drive. The second thing you need to do is to download a program to recover your deleted files. It's been a while since I've used one and there is a host of new ones out there and many of them are freeware. I would reccomend doing a google search fro free file recover apps. Download.com should also have a wealth of software as well.

Piriform do a great free file recovery tool called recuva, which I highly recommend. Take a look at www.recuva.com.

I've used it several times to recover files when friends or relatives have accidentally deleted important files on their PC's. I carry a copy everywhere on one of my USB sticks (along with portable versions of Piriforms other free apps CCleaner and Defraggler plus others like the full Sysinternals suite of system diagnostic tools, Cain and abel etc. etc...)!

As the other posters have already stated, once you've deleted a file, the space it used to occupy is basically open to being overwritten and could be overwritten by the system at any time.

But usually, as long as you're quick with your recovery tool (and as long as you're lucky), you should be able to recover most, if not all of your files!

After installing Recuva on your PC, you can create a portable version of the app to go onto a USB stick. To do this, open up your program files directory (or wherever you installed Recuva) and copy the entire Recuva folder to a USB stick. Open the Recuva folder on the USB stick, right click and select 'new->text document' to create a new text file and rename it portable.dat. This will cause Recuva to create and use an ini file in the folder on the USB stick to store user preferences instead of making regsitry entries.

Now you have a copy of Recuva which you can take anywhere with you. Next time you or someone you know accidentally deletes something on any windows PC, all you need to do is plug in your USB stick, fire up Recuva and recover the files!

This post has probably arrived too late to recover the files you've posted about, but having a copy of Recuva could save your backside further down the line!

If you delete files directly using shift+delete and then these files must be recovered, you can use 'undelete' or 'data recovery' sofware, such as: 'Advanced File Recovery', 'Recuva', 'Undelete'. My suggestion would be Advanced File Recovery because of it's simplicity (when installing and using) and it's relatively small size. Besides, this tool can work directly with different media types: hard drives, memory sticks, digital camera memory cards etc.

Hi Flame,
You have resurrected a thread that is two months old, (Aug 3), it is dead, let it lie.