Don D Cake

I use Win 98 2nd edition. I set up user profiles so me and the missus could use different settings etc. This proved more trouble than it was worth so I just deleted them. And I just deleted 6 months worth of college work that my dear wife has toiled over I never even remotely thought that that would happen. I didn't even think of backing up. I'm doomed. Is there any way of restoring these files? Failing that has anyone got a spare room for a few years?

Please help....I'll be upstairs packing my bags....

Mac the Knife

The data will still be there on the HDD. Don't do any further fiddling or write any new files to the drive. Haven't found anything yet, but some other prooner will probably come up with something before I do.

This is why data recovery companies can charge such high fees....

Look in C\WINDOWS\\SYSBCKUP for rb???.cab files (where ??? is typically 001 to 005. If you have one dated earlier than your deletion of the profile then as far as I can gather you should be able to recover some if not all of your data. These files are compressed backups of the registry and associated files that Windows maintains automatically.

You can use these files to restore the registry to a previous state by using the c\windows\\command\\scanreg.exe file after booting from an emergency disk.

I use the ERU emergency recovery utility to periodically take backup snapshots of the registry and bootfiles so I'm not that familiar with scanreg but it should work.

Wait for smarter guys to chip in and don't write or erase any further data from your HDD.

Background Noise

I believe that when files are deleted, they are usually still there but their names are removed from the 'index'. Clever people or software should be able to recover some or all of it but as said above, don't write anything to the disc because those old files now appear as available space for new files - then they will be overwritten and unrecoverable.

ratsarrse

It all depends on how much the lost files are worth. If it's really important, then go to a data recovery company. It won't be cheap...but then divorce isn't cheap either! Do a search on Google for 'data recovery' - there are a number of companies in the UK. Shop around. It's really not worth messing around trying free utilities etc. if the files are important. I'll just reiterate what Mac said: don't use your PC if you plan to go down this route - you'll only increase the likelihood of overwriting the lost files.
CD-Writers are dead cheap these days. It might be worth investing in one to back up important stuff once in a while.

PaperTiger

Unless you're a wiz, completely au fait with the DOS prompt, you're gonna have to pay (through the nose) for one of the recovery utilities. If you have a geek friend, he/she may be able to follow this.