WebUser – 21 August 2019

Find and recover deleted file s using Recuva to search for them

68 21 Aug - 3 Sept 2019

Videos folders in the sidebar andselect

Properties. Click the Previous Versions

tab andsee if there are any backups

there that you can select andrestore.

If you’re unluckyandyou findthat

there are nobackups, nofilesin

OneDrive and noprevious versions,

you’re almost out of options –but not

quite. Goto the CCleaner website,

downloadRecuva (bit.ly/recu482) and

runit. This lifesavingtool has anoption

to findall deleted files, but it may be

easier to focus on one file typeat a time,

suchas Pictures, for example. Select the

optionto search ina specific location

andset it toC:\. Try astandard scanfor

deleted files, andif that doesn’t work,

repeat the processwith Enable Deep

Scan selected.

Finding your deleted filescould take a

longtime, and there is no guarantee

that the tool will be able to find any or

all of them. The deleted file list is likely

to contain alot of items, which makes

finding your lost fileslike looking for a

needle in a haystack.

GENERAL PC

Recover lost photos

Q

I was transferring photographs from

mycamerato my computer’s hard

drivefor safekeeping when something

This fortnightRoland has beenkeepingcool in the heat thanksto a USB-powered fan plugged into his PC

Ask the Expert

Q

Summer is here and

temperatures are rising,

butmy computer is freezing!

Sometimes it freezes on the

lock screen, and other times it

getsto the desktop and then

freezes. Is the heatresponsible

for this? Iread that old PCs can

get clogged up with dust.

Bill Gardener, via email

A

Your PCis freezingbefore it

has had timeto generate

any heat, so it’s probably not

temperature related. The cause

is more likely to besomething

that loads with Windows, such

as a hardware driver or a program

that runsin the background.

Searchfor andopenDevice

Manager fromthe taskbar. Expand

eachsection all the way to ‘Print

queues’, right-click eachitemand

Stop your

PC crashing

HARDWARE

Updating the drivers in Device Manager could

stoproguehardware crashing your PC

select ‘Update driver’. Then

right-click anempty part of the

taskbar andselect Task Manager.

Click the Start-up tab, select each

item and disable it. Restart, and

hopefully your PCwill runnormally.

went wrong. I saw the photos in Explorer,

so I selected them and used cut.ThenI

navigated to a folder onmy computer’s

hard drive (a subfolder of Pictures) and

triedto paste them into it, but nothing

happened.When Iwent backto the

camera’sstorage the photoswere no

longer there.

Where did the photos go and is there

anywayof getting them back?Why did

this happen?

Sarah Thompson, via email

A

Whenyou cutfilesin Explorer by

selecting themandpressing Ctrl+X,

for example, Windowscopies only the

filenames to the clipboard. It doesn’t

delete any filesat this point. Only when

you move the filesdoes it delete the

originals, so it’s difficult to see how you

could have lost your filesthis way.

One possibility is that you did move

them but not to where you expected.

Perhaps you accidentally selecteda

different folder andthe photos ended

upthere instead.

They’re probably JPEGimages, so try

searching your hard drive for that type

of file. Select the C: drive in Explorer,

thenclick inthe searchbox. Enter

*.jpg date:andselect ‘This week’,

‘Lastweek’, ‘This month’ or ‘Lastmonth’

to showall JPEGimagesfromwithin

that date range. With any luck, your

photos will beonthe drive somewhere.

You can also try to recover the photos

fromyour camera’s storage. Connect it

to the PCandopenanExplorer window

as if you were going to transfer photos.

ThenrunRecuva (bit.ly/recu482) and

scanthe camera’s storagefor deleted

files. The programshould findthem

andlet you recover them.

If this ever happens again, remember

that pressing Ctrl+Z undoes the last

operation in Explorer, suchas restoring

deletedor moved files.