Desperate Help needed

[kcsupratt]

I just did a big mistake on my PC. I accidently deleted all pictures of my new born baby. The good thing and I hope this is a good thing was I created a VideoSlide show using Photodex ProShow Gold.

Is there anyway to extract the Dat file back in to jpegs. Please let the answer be yes. If so can you point me in the direction what program to use.

Thanks everyone

[Tommyknocker]

Yes, apparently. Click here.

[bottle-necked]

You can check the "Recycle Bin" to see if your deleted photos are still being stored, and there are also several 'undelete' programs available that might be able to recover your deleted files from your hard drive. I was watching Tech TV The Screensavers recently and they posted a program that can recover deleted photos from camera media, even if the media had been reused.

You have several options available, but the best would have been to always make a CD-R backup of items you can't afford to loose.

To find the 'undelete' program try using www.google.com can searching for 'windows xp undelete' (or whatever OS you're using). www.thescreensavers.com 'shownotes' should have a link to the removable media undelete program they showed.

Good luck.

[penamty]

There are programs that will allow you to recover deleted files as long as they have not been overwritten beyond repair. Once I used Easy Recovery Professional to recover data from an 80 GB HD that I accidentally formatted, the disk was completely full of media files and after running Easy Recovery I was able to retrieve more than 100Gb of files because it actually recovered files that I had previously deleted and overwritten with new files before the accidental format.

[FOO]

Do you still have your Video Slide Show ? and can you play it with
anything ?

[kcsupratt]

Everyone Thanks for the replies back.
First, The files are lost and unrecoverable. Had a brain fart and formated my second drive .

Tommyknocker i will check out that program you suggest. Thanks

Foo, I can still view the slide show in Proshow. The CD is setup like a VCD or maybe it is.

Thanks again everyone

[FOO]

If you can view your slide show , you can extract still frames from it

[kcsupratt]

Foo,

Can you tell me how ? Is it within ProShow, cause I looked, maybe not hard enough.

Thanks again

[bottle-necked]

Even though you formatted the drive doesn't necessarly mean the files are lost forever. These undelete programs are still worth a try. Screen shots of a VCD slideshow aren't going to give you high quality printable photos.

Some slideshow software actually puts a copy of the original photo on the disk. Have you checked the disks file structure yet? Worth a shot.

Good luck.

[kcsupratt]

BottleNeck,
Those files are lost and gone. I looked tried VCDGear but I can't find a way to extract my files individually.

The only good thing at least I have my files on a CD. But I sure would like to have my jpegs back so I am able to print out pictures.

Any other ideas ?

Thanks

[presto]

BottleNeck,
Those files are lost and gone.

You may be correct but why are you so certain?

[freestyler]

Almost sounds like you want the files to be gone...

How much child support do you owe? J/K

[bottle-necked]

Ok, let me try to explain again.........

1. 'If you formatted a drive with valuable photos on it' , then later put some other files on that drive, then now you want your valuable photos back, then you have (((( very few )))) options.... Download a trial version of an Undelete Program, like Windows PC Data Recovery Software , install the program and let it try and recover ((((( what it can )))) of your valuable photos. You may get lucky and get them all back, or at least some of them. It all depends how much you've put on this drive since you formatted it and deleted your photos. The files that were overwritten, again, may be lost forever.

2. Did you email, send, give, photos to family or friends? If so then ask for copies. This may recover some of them.

3. Try to extract copies from that VCD slideshow you've got. Like I said before, 'some slideshow programs' will put a folder on the disk with the original photo files in it, 'some will not'. If so, then use Windows Explorer, browse the disk looking for a folder named "Pictures" or "Photos" or something. Again, you might get lucky. If this is not the case then you can take "ScreenShots" of the photos you want off the slideshow. This can be done several ways like using Windows PrintScreen button and a photo program. The simplest way of doing this is to view the slideshow in fullscreen mode and when the photo comes up you want hit the 'PrintScreen' button once, pause the slideshow, open Windows Paint, choose "Edit" then "Paste" then SaveAs, name the file then go to the next shot. If that doesn't work then use a viewer program that has a ScreenShot function built in.

4. Did you try "System Restore"?

5. Did you try "Recycle Bin"?

My fingers are tired.

[FOO]

The screen capture doesn't work on videos sometimes.

If it doesn't , I would try VirtualDubMod . It can save
frames or whole video sequences as multiple bitmaps.

PowerDVD will save frames, and WinDVD may also.

[ZippyP.]

WinDVD[/url] may also.

Yup.

[kcsupratt]

Bottleneck,

I downloaded theWindows PC Data Recovery and I was able to see all the files that were deleted off my hard drive. It was costly to retrieve it but the program works great. THANK YOU for your suggestion. It was costly but priceless. Thanks again for your help and everyone's else's help.

[bottle-necked]

I didn't mean for you to actually spend money to recover those files, that takes all the fun out of it. hehe

Glad you got them back anyway.
Good luck.

TiP: don't just have *1* copy of things you can't afford to loose. Make a CD-RW backup while keeping your original files on hard drive, then when that CD-RW gets full - burn a CDR, erase the RW and start over again. That way you always have a 'removable' backup of your files.

Thought: I can delete a file on my drive, reformat, and probably reinstall Windows, then download a simple program from the internet and recover the file?????? I somehow don't find that very conforting to know.... lol

[SaSi]

Thought: I can delete a file on my drive, reformat, and probably reinstall Windows, then download a simple program from the internet and recover the file?????? I somehow don't find that very conforting to know.... lol

This is why disks with sensitive information aren't formatted. They are "sanitized".

[bottle-necked]