File-Recovery.NET

Users Guide

3 TROUBLESHOOTING

The scenarios in this chapter originate from actual help service offered to customers.

"UNREGISTERED VERSION" Message

I have purchased and copied software onto the floppy. When starting Active@ File Recovery, I get a message that reads “UNREGISTERED VERSION”.

Possible Cause

You forgot to copy SETTINGS.INI. This file contains your registration key.

Solution 1   Look for SETTINGS.INI at the installation folder and copy it to the same place where you start Active@ File Recovery from.

Solution 2   Install software directly to the floppy disk. All necessary files will be copied there.

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Maximizing Chances of Recovering Files

I deleted a file. How long do I have before data recovery is no longer possible?

Discussion  

It is not possible to predict a time like this in hours or days. Microsoft Windows can overwrite a deleted file immediately if it selects the same data clusters.

Solution   To maximize chances of recovery try not to write anything onto the drive where a deleted file is located before you start using recovery software.

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Getting the Trial Version

How can I download the trial version of Active@ File Recovery utility?

Solution   You can do it from the www.file-recovery.net Web site. The trial version is a utility with full functionality of the final program. The only limitation is the maximum size of the file being restored.

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Restoring Files

 I have deleted a very important document. It was deleted before Active@ File Recovery was installed on my computer. Is it possible to restore it?

Solution   If the file has not already been over written (by some other files) then chances are good for recovery.

When you discover that an important file has been deleted, download and install Active@ File Recovery and search for this file. It may be a good idea to avoid disk activity on this particular hard drive as follows:

• Do not delete other files
• Avoid restarting the computer
• Do not open a large number of programs concurrently (increased OS paging and swapping activity takes place on the hard drive)

All of these activities are disk storage intensive. A new temporary file might overwrite or partially overwrite the deleted document. More drive storage events will make finding a particular file more complicated.

The more free hard drive space you have on your computer, the greater the chances for a successful retrieval of deleted file contents. It is always a good idea to extract and install Active@ File Recovery to a different physical hard drive - one that does not contain important deleted file(s).

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Windows 2000, Windows XP

Does Active@ File Recovery work under Windows 2000 / XP?

Answer   Yes, it does.

Windows 3.x

Does Active@ File Recovery work under Windows 3.x

Answer   No. Support of 16-bit operation systems like Windows 3.1 is not implemented.

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Browser Support

I have Netscape Navigator 4.6 as my default browser. Will I be able to install and use Active@ File Recovery?

Answer   Yes. To download and install software you need to have Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, or any other browser that supports file download. The browser is required only to retrieve the file. After software installation the browser is not needed to run the utility.

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Non-English File Names

Does Active@ File Recovery support localized (e.g. French, Spanish) file names?

Answer   Yes. Provided the operating system and file system support localized file names, the utility will support special characters.

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Long File Names

Will Active@ File Recovery recover long file names?

Answer   Yes. Provided the operating system and file system support long file names

the utility supports them.

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Disk Image

What is a Disk Image? Why is it needed?

Answer   Disk Image is a mirror of your logical drive that is stored in one file. A Disk Image file can be useful when you want to back up the contents of the whole drive, and restore it or work with it later.

Before you start recovering deleted files, it may be a good idea to create a Disk Image for this drive, if you have enough space on another drive. If something goes wrong while recovering the files (for example, recovering them onto the same drive could destroy their contents), you will be able to recover these deleted files and folders from the Disk Image that you have wisely created.