I emptied my recycle bin and now need something that was in it!

[Capetonian]

I emptied my recycle bin (XP), as one does periodically, and realised that I now need the contents of a folder that was in it.

It's not catastrophic and it will take me less than an hour to gather the information again, but if there is a quick and easy way to get it back, bearing in mind I'm a technophobe, I'd be grateful.

I don't want to do a system restore as last time I did so I screwed up. By the way I only emptied it yesterday.

Thanks.

[Baldur]

To my knowledge there is nothing within Windows XP itself to help you.

Try this for more information: Recovering Deleted Files (http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php)

Good luck

[BOAC]

CT - the main thing is not to have anything write to the drive where the 'bin' is as it could (if you are unlucky!) over-write the space which is now marked as 'free' - ie don't 'save' anything until you have recovered the file.

[Capetonian]

Thank you both. I tried the little tool that was on the link that Baldur supplied, and it showed literally thousands of deleted files. For some reason the ones I wanted weren't all there, about 3 out of 30 or so. Anyway it was a help, and thank you.

There is a little background to this. I installed Picasa (for photos) the other day, and it copied every single image on my computer, including some I didn't even know were there (scary!!) and when I deleted the ones I didn't want, it seems to have deleted the whole folder that they were in.

Anyway not the end of the world.

[frostbite]

Yes, Picasa does tend to grab everything in sight.

You can regulate that by diving into the tools and telling it exactly which folders to scan when you start it up.

[BOAC]

CT - there are other (free) file recovery tools - Google

[Jamescrowe]

Hi,

You can recover files which have emptied from the Recycle Bin by using File recovery tool (http://www.remosoftware.com/file-recovery-software). This software recovers files even if emptied from the Recycle Bin, accidental format, from reinstalled windows, disk recovery after a hard disk crash, from partitioning error etc. Even this file recovery tool recovers RAW files. This software works with Microsoft windows 7, vista, 2003, XP and 2000. And also recovers deleted emails of Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook express.

[Cameronian]

Recuva from Piriform "Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download" at piriform.com seems to work pretty well, like all of their other stuff. All their rather useful utilities are free, unless you want to make a voluntary contribution, and are simple no nonsense stuff as well.