I have mistakenly deleted a directory in WP 6.0a and lost a bunch of old dictation. Is there anyway to recover that? I have windows 95. Thanks for any advice. I realize that the longer this goes, the less I can recover. Any advice appreciated.

Sandy

Thanks

Sandy

Also Windows 95 and later doesn't allow direct disk access by other programs so you might have to run the Lock command before running the Undelete command. Locking Windows might not be necessary if you boot with the DOS 6.22 boot disk. I don't remember for sure, I think it is necessary though because the hard drives under Win95 are partitioned in a different way than they are in DOS.

One word of caution: The Undelete and Lock commands give you direct access to your hard drive so there is a chance that something could go wrong and you'll mess up the file allocation table (FAT) which will require repartioning and reformatting the hard drive and losing all the data on the drive in the process.

That said, I've done this before and walked people through it over the phone without any problems on both Win95 and Win98 systems.

Copying your existing files to a CD, zip drive, or a completely separate hard drive is always a good idea before doing something like this.

Mike DeTuri

Thanks for your input. I think I am out of luck. I don't have a zip file, my Cd drive is read only, and I have some MS-Dos 6.2 setup floppy disks from 1993, set of 3 disks for my older 486 computer. I don't know how to lock windows. This sounds more risky than it may be worth. It is about 250 text files of dictation for one doctor for the year 2001. I can probably live with out it. It is just nice to have for reprints. Arrrrrrgh. It may be time to invest in some upgrades. I did find Symantec had a Systems software that I was told a "Windoc" could search for deleted files, but it is for Windows 98 and above, so out of luck again. Thank you for your time and input Mike. I think I will just live and learn........

Sandy

I am saving now. Takes a lot of 3 1/2" floppy disks to do any backing up. Thanks for all your help.

S.

Saone, to Lock Windows you just type "lock" at the command prompt, without quotes. You only want to backup your data files not your programs. You can always reinstall your programs. If you are backing up a lot of files to floppy be aware that you can only get about 112 files into the root directory of A:\. (This is because a root directory only has so many slots for filenames/directories.) If you create a directory on A:\ like A:\myfiles\ then you can fill the floppy to capacity.

Mike DeTuri

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: Mike ]

What about Norton Utilities 2001 V 5.0, would that help me at all recover any of it?

s.

[ 01-04-2002: Message edited by: saone ]

I'm not sure if the disks you have will work, does one of the disks have a file on it named command.com? If so, they should work. You can also create a new boot disk from the one you have by copying four system files to a blank floppy:
command.com
io.sys
msdos.sys
drvspace.bin

The last three are hidden files so you will need to use the attrib command to unhide them or set Windows to show you hidden files and copy them in Windows to a blank floppy.

Norton Utilities will probably work also. I thought they had an undeleter in there. I've never used Norton Utilities so I'm not 100% sure.

Be sure to let us know what happens.

Mike DeTuri

I will keep plugging away at this and see if I can get any of it back. I will post what I do and any more questions. Thank you.

Sandy

Here is what I decided to do. I have old software, I know, but I have too much invested in my Flash Forward (abbreviation software they don't make anymore) to upgrade Wordperfect 6,0a. I can't upgrade Flash Forward to work with newer versions of Wordperfect. My version of Wordperfect won't work under Windows 98, so I am kind of stuck. Working with DOS scares me at this point because I can't back-up my hard drive right now. So, I have ordered Norton Utilities 2001 V5.0 for Windows 95. When it gets here, I will load it and see if I can recover anything. I am sure a lot will be corrupted, because as an independent, I have only one working computer and 24 hour deadlines. Unless I had someone to walk me through step by step for the DOS undelete approach, it just seems to risky for an amateur like me. But, I have gained some knowledge in this adventure. I will post what happens with the Norton Utitlities, if anything.

Thanks,

Sandy