Troubleshooting
The scenarios shown below 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ONTO THE DRIVE CONTAINING YOUR IMPORTANT DATA THAT YOU HAVE JUST DELETED ACCIDENTALLY!Even data recovery software installation could spoil your sensitive data. If the data is really important to you, and you do not have another logical drive to install software to, take whole hard drive out of the computer and plug into another computer where data recovery software has been already installed.
DO NOT SAVE ONTO THE SAME DRIVE DATA THAT YOU FOUND AND TRYING TO RECOVER!While saving recovered data onto the same drive where sensitive data was located, you can intrude in process of recovering by overwriting table records for this and other deleted entries. It's better to save data onto another logical, removable, network or floppy drive.
CREATE DISK IMAGE IF YOU HAVE EXTRA HARD DRIVE, OR OTHER LOGICAL DRIVES ARE BIG ENOUGH!Disk Image is a mirror of your logical drive that is stored in one file. This can be useful when you want to backup the contents of the whole drive, and restore it or work with it later. Before you start recovering the deleted files, it may be a good idea to create a Disk Image for this drive, if you have enough space at another drive. Why? Because if you do something wrong while recovering the files (for example, recovering them onto the same drive could destroy their contents), you still will be able to recover these deleted files and folders from the Disk Image that you have wisely created.