Recovered Files Not Working

[bmjuurlink]

I just used some freeware file recovery programs and it found the files I was looking to recover...but when I try to open them (in MS Word) a window pops up saying 'File COnversion' Select the encoding that makes your document readable. Text encoding: Windows - MS-DOS - Other Encoding.

None of these work at all. Is there a way to make the files readable...it all comes up as gibberish. Does this mean they're corrupt? It's on a drive that isn't used very often and there's a lot of files to recover...I would have thought that if one of them was written over then at least some of them would have worked.

EG: á !x ¿–ŽO& ëh ª È ¤¯rÿ‰É$âçô@«® zP°‰¿ÿ
`ðSÄ2ˆ'ÜëÝœZX‚acá0ùÚŠ'ÿÊȯê"«’µ<´Ô MÕ u®R


Any help would be REALLY appreciated!!
-bryan juulink

 

[dbData]

Yes, it means they are corrupt. There are many possiblities as to why. Cyl./Head/Sector geometry is one, File Fragmenation is another of a potential bunch of reasons.

What freeware tool did you use? Are you still using the hard drive? What OS? What file system? What happened to require recover?


dbData

http://www.howtorecoverdata.com

 

[bliswell]

A very similary thing happened to me trying to recover a powerpoint file.
I recovered the deleted file with pci_filerecovery.exe, and it returned the powerpoint file that windows xp could see into well enough to use the first slide for the icon. But the file wouldn't open up.
Then I downloaded pprdemo.exe and tried to recover with that, but I got out of it only two images, not the original 35 slides.


What to do next?

Any clues?

 

[HeddaLora]

When you are opening the file, set it to "all file types" rather than "recover from" file type. If you can't do that (because it's forcing you to "recover"), then open the file in WordPad instead, then copy and paste the data into a Word doc.

For future reference, you might have better luck using Undelete (

http://www.executive.com)

(if you're recovering deleted files). If it's just that the files are corrupt, then try the above (opening in WordPad).

Hedda Lora