Hello and thank you in advance for any help and direction.
Objective: I need to recover the content of a word document.
Backstory: My Mom's laptop is dysfunctional and basically it rebooted and her Windows 10 looked like a new install and all her folders were cleaned-out, and it continued to do this seemingly every time it rebooted for updates/etc. Luckily, it initially saved them in a profile in Users so I was able to recover a lot of her stuff just searching folders. It only seemed to make this profile once so after that the laptop would still wipe itself but it would not add any new content to the profile, everything was effectively lost that was created in that timeframe. So the issue is this, basically she had a Word document (a poem) and it is now lost because Windows wiped everything, and it wasn't backed-up in time.
Progress/Trials: [Working remotely though TeamView] When I opened Word I could see the file in the history but it would not open, and I could not find the file normally (looking in files, searching folders, looking at previous versions of folders - rarely were any). [Laptop now in my possession] I Googled and found EaseUS Data Recovery. I took it for a spin and to my excitement it did locate the file. A Word document with the right name showing about 16 kb size. However, it seems to be corrupt and won't open properly:
I thought most of what I encountered was probably typical but I can get screenshots of whatever is needed to provide more info.
Objective: I need to recover the content of a word document.
Backstory: My Mom's laptop is dysfunctional and basically it rebooted and her Windows 10 looked like a new install and all her folders were cleaned-out, and it continued to do this seemingly every time it rebooted for updates/etc. Luckily, it initially saved them in a profile in Users so I was able to recover a lot of her stuff just searching folders. It only seemed to make this profile once so after that the laptop would still wipe itself but it would not add any new content to the profile, everything was effectively lost that was created in that timeframe. So the issue is this, basically she had a Word document (a poem) and it is now lost because Windows wiped everything, and it wasn't backed-up in time.
Progress/Trials: [Working remotely though TeamView] When I opened Word I could see the file in the history but it would not open, and I could not find the file normally (looking in files, searching folders, looking at previous versions of folders - rarely were any). [Laptop now in my possession] I Googled and found EaseUS Data Recovery. I took it for a spin and to my excitement it did locate the file. A Word document with the right name showing about 16 kb size. However, it seems to be corrupt and won't open properly:
- If I open it normally it gives an error message and shows no content.
- I tried "Open and Repair" but it does the same thing.
- I tried opening it with "Recover Text from Any File" and it opens a word document with gibberish/symbols throughout and also a error message. Question: Are these symbols typically random and irrelevant or are they code that could be directly translated back?
- Also tried opening with Notepad and Notepad++ but all the text is gibberish.
- I downloaded and tried Stellar Repair for Word and used it on the document but it says "Invalid file format" and says the document is severely damaged.
I thought most of what I encountered was probably typical but I can get screenshots of whatever is needed to provide more info.