Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject: A few questions
hopefully some of u here can help with my questions!
1st of all id like to know if there is any way of retrieving photos from a broken laptop, and whether u can do this fairly easily urself. id rather avoid going to someone professional as there are some naughty files on there!
2nd, is there any programs u could reccomend to permanently delete files and free up disk space? i used to have one but it doesnt work with vista which i have now (and hate).
finally, recently for some reason my laptop has been really slow and have started getting pop ups all the time. this didnt happen before, has just started in the last week and wondering what i can do for this also?
thanks for any replies i may get, i know it must get annoying with techology-useless people posting their questions!
another thing- are there genuinely any programs that permanently delete files so they cant be recovered? because i have been looking around and have also been finding programs that claim to be able to restore them!
Joined: 10 Jan 2005 Posts: 1046 Location: Hampshire, UK
Posted: Fri Jan 25, 2008 8:04 pm Post subject: Re: A few questions
xKeirax wrote:
1st of all id like to know if there is any way of retrieving photos from a broken laptop, and whether u can do this fairly easily urself. id rather avoid going to someone professional as there are some naughty files on there!
Depends on your skills. I'd take the drive out of the laptop and mount it as a second drive on another machine. Standard filesystem repair and retrival software should take you from there.
There are plenty of professionals that don't mind handling dodgy files, provided they're not illegal.
xKeirax wrote:
2nd, is there any programs u could reccomend to permanently delete files and free up disk space?
I know of several free programs for linux that'll take files to the point where even the hard disk manufacturer with specialist tools will struggle. I'm sure the same exist for Doze.
If you want to scrub the entire disk then dban (dban.sourceforge.net) is highly recommended for any PC.
Joined: 21 Oct 2005 Posts: 5766 Location: In UR base snifin all UR pantys
Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2008 8:03 pm Post subject: Re: A few questions
xKeirax wrote:
hopefully some of u here can help with my questions!
1st of all id like to know if there is any way of retrieving photos from a broken laptop, and whether u can do this fairly easily urself. id rather avoid going to someone professional as there are some naughty files on there!
Yup - Tina's right, there are quite a few tools, but it depends on why / how the files went missing as to if they are really recoverable.
Attaching the drive as a second drive to another machine as suggested by Tina is definitely the best way forward as if you're running programs on a disk then there's a good chance they could be writing to the drive and potentially overwriting files that you might want to keep.
A pro will not be interested in your mucky pictures, unless you're particularly hot. If you know theres something that you don't want them to see, then tell them there's confidential information on the machine & ask them if they don't mind if you watch them recover the data even if it means you have to wait a bit longer for them to have the time to devote to it. Most guys I know who do that kind of thing won't mind.
xKeirax wrote:
2nd, is there any programs u could reccomend to permanently delete files and free up disk space? i used to have one but it doesnt work with vista which i have now (and hate).
There are a number of protection issues on vista which is why some of your old programs won't run there. I'm not running vista myself because I can't get drivers for some specialist hardware I'm using, so I can't recommend anything for you. It depends on what you're trying to hide and who from really. Emptying the recycle bin will release any space held by previously deleted files, usually this followed by defragmenting the disk should take care of business. Deleting files will not usually make your machine run faster if that's the reason.
xKeirax wrote:
finally, recently for some reason my laptop has been really slow and have started getting pop ups all the time. this didnt happen before, has just started in the last week and wondering what i can do for this also?
Ahhh - I'm assuming the pop-ups are adverts, in which case you may have picked up something nasty somewhere. I'd recommend a quick visit to http://www.getsafeonline.org - also you have the option of Windows Defender and the Malicious Software Removal Tool which you can get from http://download.microsoft.com - I've used and it's nice & simple, plus you have the bonus that you've already paid for them.
xKeirax wrote:
thanks for any replies i may get, i know it must get annoying with techology-useless people posting their questions!
Nah, it's fine - if it bothered me (for one) then I wouldn't look in here.
Just remember "A geek is for life, not just fixing your computer."
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