Recovered files unreadable

[Antipodean]

Moved doc, docx, xls, xlsx, jpg files from a backup drive to a new computer. Files showed up, and I used them for a few days.

As it was a demo computer I changed the owner name via regedit. Then could not locate the files.

Have used two undelete programs, these locate the files. When recovered however, although the names show, the contents are unreadable.

Went back to the backup drive. Cannot locate the files, even using an undelete program.

It's a great mystery to me - any ideas will be appreciated.

Antipodean

 

[pjmelect]

Can you use system restore to undo the regedit changes?

 

[Antipodean]

Thanks pjmelect. Agood suggestion, butworried that it might overwrite or damage the data, particularly as my efforts in poking around changing names via regedit may be incomplete. I suspect the original name is still in there on at least one entry.

I'm out of my experience level on this one ....

????

 

[pjmelect]

System restore should be safe as you can always undo the restore.

 

[karl_ranseier]

if these files where located on the desktop they might be still there.
check C:\Users\[OLD_USERNAME]\Desktop

 

[Antipodean]

Thanks Youngster, an excellent idea but I think I've overwritten it. I also tried restore, which kinda proves it. Dumb!! Fortunately, I made a disk copy of my files last year, so I've only got to reconstruct the past twelve months of accounting records....Yep, from now on, I'm going to save on a silver disk and lock it in the safe!

And thanks also to Veteran for the ideas, as you can see, it would have worked had i not messed up.

Antipodean

 

[hang-the-9]

What registy entries did you change exactly? Just changing the registered owner will do nothing to any files, it just changed a display setting and some configuration things for Office and other programs that display the owner name. If you just changed the Owner fields, the files would not have been affected one bit, some other issue would have caused this.

Also, why would you "Move" files from a backup drive instead of copying them? Kinda defeats the whole purpose of a "backup".