Comments on: Files Lost After Windows XP Temporary Profile Zapped -- Any Way to Recover?

Question: Files Lost After Windows XP Temporary Profile Zapped -- Any Way to Recover?

brookedel — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 01:44:16 -0800

Is there any way to recover files saved under a temporary profile in Windows XP? (MI)

Condensing my long and sordid story: after my father's profile was corrupted, my sister went onto the computer under a temporary profile. My father was confused about where his files were, so she moved the contents of his Documents folder to a different location (not sure where exactly). After a reboot, the files were gone. Disappeared into the ether. My guess is that she saved these files somewhere within the hierarchy of the temporary profile, and they were deleted (along with the profile itself) after she rebooted the computer.

My question: can I recover them somehow? Is there a magical utility out there that can scrape up recently deleted files? Cursory searches on Google show a few file recovery utilities, but I have no idea which ones are reputable. Would a data recovery service apply in this case (all the sites I'm seeing talk about crashed hard drives and disasters, while this was just a weird mistake)?

Exhortations to "backup, you fool!" will be duly passed on to my chagrined family.

By: effugas

effugas — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 02:34:39 -0800

Yeah, go here in IE ASAP. (Won't work with SP2; grab Restoration from here instead.)

Post if this fails. There are some other tools, not so free though.

--Dan

By: pieoverdone

pieoverdone — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 04:09:06 -0800

It may have been stored in an OLK folder. You can't see this in windows explorer, but you can get to it from a dos prompt

C:\documents and settings\userid\local settings\temporary internet files\olk**\

you can copy or move the file from there. I couldn't see what the previous link went to, so my apologies if this is the same thing.

By: pieoverdone

pieoverdone — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 04:11:45 -0800

Files don't get deleted from the OLK folder on reboot. You may or may not be able to get all the way to the Temp Int Files in explorer and then manually add the next folder in the path on the address bar and then you can see it explorer style. I personally haven't tried it. I heart the dos prompt. Happy hunting.

By: signal

signal — Thu, 21 Oct 2004 15:07:48 -0800

Did you try to search for the files? They might be in some weird place.

This reminds me why I never put anything in the "my documents" folder.