Will this product help me???

[dalydose]

I want to make sure that this program can help me before I purchase it.

Here is my situation:

WindowsXP Professional

My computer would not boot properly and would behave strangely. Some of the errors that I saw were: "invalid boot.ini file", "missing autochk.exe file". Then it shows the OS loader page before stopping and starting the boot process all over again.

I now bought a new drive and did a system recovery, but I would like to either A-get the old drive to boot now and make it my main drive again or B-get the data off of the old drive. The old drive is 120GB and the new drive is a 200GB.

Is this program likely to be of use to this sort of issue? Will I be able to figure out what to do?

[GDH]

You will probably find that if you connect your problem drive to another computer as a secondary drive (the other computer needs to be running windows) then you will be able to see the complete file structure. You will then be able to copy the files off and you wont need to purchase data recovery software.

[dalydose]

That drive is connected as a second drive now. Windows does not recognize it, but it does show up in the Device Manager.

[GDH]

OK, please download this version of Recover My Files and try a Fast Format Recovery of the physical drive:

http://download.getdata.com/3-50beta/recovermyfiles.exe

Please let us know the results. It should find your entire partiton in about 20 minutes.

[dalydose]

I ran the eval software and it did find the partition and lists the files. I'm assuming that this means that your software can, indeed grab those files for me.

Other concerns:

1. How do I locate files that are "not supported"? I use Vegas Video Editing software which makes .veg files for projects and I would *definitely* want to get those files.

2. How can I verify and locate the .pst file for Outlook? Your website says that it is a 'supported' file, but it does not preview like other files.


Thanks,

Jeff

[GDH]

If you have found the files and you can click on them and preview the content of the files in the Recover My Files preview window then they can definitely be recovered.

If you have done a format recovery then you should find all files that were in the partition, even those for which a file type is not listed in the program, in the folder view of the results screen.

It is not currently possible to preview the contents of a PST file (we hope to add this to a future version, but it is complex). Appart from looking at the size and attributes of the file the only way is to save it and open it with outlook (please note that you may have to take a copy of the pst file and run Microsofts ScanPST.exe on the file).