Where's my docx file?

[Paul]

I've lost a file with the word pressure in the name. It and a wbk file
are not found in a search. I had them Friday the 11th. I looked in
recycle, used a file name search, and a content search. I come with some
old files that are way out of date. I do have a print out of the data
from the 11th, two pages of tables, which I'm not excited about
re-entering the information.

I do back up files with Win7 Backup, but am not familiar with finding
back ups there. My PC has been working just fine for more than a week.

Comments?

What you're looking for, is a "book on forensics".

1) File may exist, but put in the wrong directory.
Note that if you attempt to write a file to an illegal location,
Windows 7 has a "special place" to store the file, giving the
appearance the attempt worked. They did that, for backward
compatibility reasons.

2) File could have been deleted. Files are not really deleted until
they are overwritten. An undelete utility or a file scavenger,
could find the file. But that only works, if you *stop* writing
to the disk, before it is too late. If you continue to allow writes
to the disk partition, eventually the deleted file will be overwritten
and then it will not be recoverable. Slaving the Win7 disk to a
WinXP machine (where you've turned off System Restore completely in
advance), might allow you to work on it.

An example of a scavenger is Photorec. I did a trivial test case, and
this actually found the file.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

3) If the file system was damaged, like a whole directory went missing,
then you'd need something better than chkdsk to work on the problem.

There are a gazillion utilities out there. For your situation, I might
use a copy of Sysinternals "contig.exe" from 2006 or 2008. The latest
version broke the file listing capability. If you do something like
contig -v -a -t C: > output.txt then the entire C: partition
is listed, all files and directories. You'd need to run with admin (elevated)
to get a complete listing. The contents of System Volume Information will
not be shown (Access Denied).

Another utility, is "nfi.exe", which is an NTFS specific tool which lists
every file, and shows which sectors the files are stored on. Again, System
Volume Information is "Access Denied".

Of the two, it'll take a couple more minutes to find a copy of nfi.exe
than to find contig. But in the case of contig, you cannot use
the version currently on the web site. As it will no longer list the
entire partition. But the old versions do.

Once you have a text file with a listing of the entire disk, then it
should only be a couple minutes work to find the file. (As long as it
hasn't been deleted!)

Paul

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Open a Command Prompt window. (IF you need instructions, please ask.)

At the C:\ prompt, type:

dir \*pressure* /s /a

Press Enter.

And wait...

I'd add these two commands ahead of the dir:

C:
cd \

I say this because my command windows don't, I think by default, open at
the root (and because my prompt is not the path prompt, but that's my
fault). I do admit the C: command might not be needed, although it might
be a good idea to explicitly select the correct drive letter in some
setups.

I'd also add "and wait" at least two or three more times

 

[Char Jackson]

I think you are oversimplifying.

I do that intentionally, sometimes. ;-)

I use two tools: Everything Search,
if I just want to search for file names, Agent Ransack when I want to
search for text within the file.

I like that approach and might do the same myself if I had a need to
find a file based on text it contains. I haven't needed to do that in
many years, though.

 

[Char Jackson]

Does Everything now search for text in files?

No, but is that a common task? I've done such a search quite a few
years ago, but it was only because I wanted to see how well it worked.
It was unsuccessful, but that's not why I haven't done it since. I've
just never found a reason to do that kind of search and I want to
think that I'm typical. ;-)

If not, then I have to invert your relative rankings...

At your house, but not at my house.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

No, but is that a common task? I've done such a search quite a few
years ago, but it was only because I wanted to see how well it worked.
It was unsuccessful, but that's not why I haven't done it since. I've
just never found a reason to do that kind of search and I want to
think that I'm typical. ;-)


At your house, but not at my house.

I do search for text occasionally, albeit less often than for file name
only.

I did comment elsethread that it might be smart for me to use both...

 

[mechanic]

No, but is that a common task?

It may not be am everyday task but it's a vital one when you need
it. I've recently downloaded a coding support file archive from a
textbook site which unpacked to several hundred small files with
different but not descriptive names. The files didn't line up with
page numbers in the book either. Other than a manual hunt and peck
search which might take hours, a proper desktop search tool was
invaluable.

I use a beta test version of X1 which indexes quickly and is very
flexible in searching criteria.

 

[Ken Blake]

No, but is that a common task? I've done such a search quite a few
years ago, but it was only because I wanted to see how well it worked.
It was unsuccessful, but that's not why I haven't done it since. I've
just never found a reason to do that kind of search and I want to
think that I'm typical. ;-)

Speaking for myself, yes, it's a common task. Perhaps not as common as
searching by file name, but there are many times when I know something
about the contents of a file, but not its name,

 

[Ken Blake]

You've gotten your attributions wrong. I didn't write the above.

What's in a vame? A rose by any other vame would smell as sweet...

Leaving aside the "vame," that's still a (minor) misquotation. It's

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."



Your choice of course, but I don't have any problem with using two or
more tools. As an analogy, I don't drive screws with a chisel.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

You've gotten your attributions wrong. I didn't write the above.

No, *I* didn't get it wrong; it does look like my newsreader did funny
things with the quoting. I just replied to my own post and let Dialog do
the quoting. That material was in fact mine, so I guess I should be mad
at Dialog for denying me proper credit.

Leaving aside the "vame," that's still a (minor) misquotation. It's

"That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

You must have meant "That which we call a rose by any other vame..."

Your choice of course, but I don't have any problem with using two or
more tools. As an analogy, I don't drive screws with a chisel.

As a better analogy, I don't own an electric screwdriver.

Both programs will search, so your analogy is flawed unless you run it
in reverse, since only FileLocator will find text. I give up speed and
gain functionality.

 

[Char Jackson]

It may not be am everyday task but it's a vital one when you need
it. I've recently downloaded a coding support file archive from a
textbook site which unpacked to several hundred small files with
different but not descriptive names. The files didn't line up with
page numbers in the book either. Other than a manual hunt and peck
search which might take hours, a proper desktop search tool was
invaluable.

That sounds like a valid scenario, but it's not something I've run
into myself. I haven't had a need to search for a file by its contents
and I'd like to believe that everyone is like me.

 

[Char Jackson]

Speaking for myself, yes, it's a common task. Perhaps not as common as
searching by file name, but there are many times when I know something
about the contents of a file, but not its name,

<insert age-related joke here>

(g,d,&r)

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I only use FileLocator, but that might be a mistake, since Everything is
so fast for file-vame only searches.

This is just a test, or at least a comparison...

Because Ken Blake noticed something odd about the attributions in my
earlier reply, I decided to see what they look like in a different
newsreader.

As before, after clicking on follow-up to newsgroup and adding some
text, I'm letting the newsreader, MesNews this time, do the
bookkeeping.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

This is just a test, or at least a comparison...

Because Ken Blake noticed something odd about the attributions in my
earlier reply, I decided to see what they look like in a different
newsreader.

As before, after clicking on follow-up to newsgroup and adding some
text, I'm letting the newsreader, MesNews this time, do the
bookkeeping.

After looking at this post and the earlier one in both readers (and
taking a deep breath!), I figured out the problem.

Ken Blake misparsed the quoting.

All the single and double ">" characters were marking *my* words, and
were not attributing them to Ken. Ken's words got a triple quote mark.

That's because I replied to myself...No one else was listening, I guess

 

[GreyCloud]

On 5/15/2012 1:35 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

Hi Char. Well, I finally got things worked out to my satisfaction on
getting a new HP with Win7 Pro, along with VS2010 Pro.
So far so good, plus I really like what they did with the compiler set.

It's been a long while, I believe it has been since last year I last
posted in here. But I'm still and slowly getting accustomed to win7 and
later I'll have a few questions about the security policies.

 

[Char Jackson]

On 5/15/2012 1:35 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

Hi Char. Well, I finally got things worked out to my satisfaction on
getting a new HP with Win7 Pro, along with VS2010 Pro.
So far so good, plus I really like what they did with the compiler set.

It's been a long while, I believe it has been since last year I last
posted in here. But I'm still and slowly getting accustomed to win7 and
later I'll have a few questions about the security policies.

Welcome back! There are some very knowledgeable folks around here, and
a few less so (like me) Post up and I'm sure you'll get people to
respond.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

Welcome back! There are some very knowledgeable folks around here, and
Seconded.

a few less so (like me) Post up and I'm sure you'll get people to
respond.

No, I think _I'm_ in the second group (I don't even have a W7 machine
ATM); I think you Char are in the first.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"What happens if I press this button?" "I wouldn't ..." (pinggg!) "Oh!" "What
happened?" "A sign lit up, saying `please do not press this button
again'!"(s1f2)

 

[Stephen Wolstenholme]

Speaking for myself, yes, it's a common task. Perhaps not as common as
searching by file name, but there are many times when I know something
about the contents of a file, but not its name,

I use Find in Files in Visual Studio often in my own developments but
have rarely extended the search range. Either way, after the first
run, the search is fast. I guess it produces an index on the first run
as it takes a few minutes.

Steve

 

[Char Jackson]

In message <[email protected]>, Char Jackson

No, I think _I'm_ in the second group (I don't even have a W7 machine
ATM); I think you Char are in the first.

Thanks, John. I wasn't intentionally fishing for a compliment, but I
appreciate it.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Thanks, John. I wasn't intentionally fishing for a compliment, but I
appreciate it.

I think of you and Gene (stumbling) as The Men, with a couple of others
as well.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he
is
very probably wrong." - Arthur C. Clarke