Recovery software in Windows 7?

D

Dallows

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Jun 18, 2004
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So how the hell am I supposed to use a data recovery tool like NTFS Undelete or Recuva in Windows 7? I keep getting an error of access denied and that I need admin rights. I have all the rights I can get, and running as admin doesn't work.

Am I supposed to log out and log in as the hidden/inactive admin account?
 
There is no Administrator account in Windows 7, regardless of who tells you otherwise - no account can ever have that level of access in the way(s) that type of account had in pre-Vista OSes. Since Vista, UAC (even if you disable it) will still be at work keeping the Administrator level stuff to a certain point and when you hit it, you'll require elevation.

The basic gist of it is ALL user accounts in Vista/Windows 7 require elevation, even with UAC disabled, and for good reasons (even if people hate it). Linux distros and OSX do the same things whenever you're attempting to do accomplish something that has hooks into the system itself, so I never could figure out why people complain so much. :D

Anywho, if right-clicking on the app's .exe or setup file isn't allowing you to do anything or actually run the app/install it, I'd think something else might be wrong with that system, actually. There's a portable version of Recuva, might give that a shot and try to run it from a USB stick - obviously if you're attempting data recovery you need to ensure that you're not using the machine with the data you want to recover on it - using such a machine is going to potentially just ruin the data you're trying to get back.

Gotta use another machine and attach that hard drive to it, or run recovery software from a USB stick (as I just mentioned) or bootable media (CD/DVD/USB stick).
 
I don't think you're understanding. Haven't had a chance to test this on another machine yet, but it's pretty simple.

Lets say you accidentally delete a file from your computer. Gone from recycle bin. Recuva attempts to locate the file and will determine whether or not it can restore it. Pretty sure NTFS Undelete does the same basic thing.

Problem is when running in Windows 7 I get an access denied message when it tries to scan the folder location to see what it can recover.

Get it?
 
Well, just for the record: Recuva (the product from Piriform, makers of CCleaner, Defraggler, etc) can only "recuva" files that go to the Recycle Bin first - I'm not saying the OP didn't do it that way, I'm only stating that Recuva works by pulling up data from the Recycle Bin (stored in the hidden system folder called Recycler) and can retrieve data that way.

If the file(s) was/were deleted by Shift-Delete or anything from the command line, Recuva won't be able to find them at all, nor will most of the Windows-based recovery apps, notably the cheapy-cheapy free ones like Recuva itself. It's nice for quick recovery if you plan ahead and send files to the Recycle Bin first and you have Recuva already installed or running from a USB stick, etc.

Having said that, the only reason I can see for the permission issues is that a) the file(s) is/are in a folder that some other user account created and would therefore be the owner of (so you'd need to inherit the permissions or reset them, obviously), or the file(s) is/are "owned" by another account - that's two different things: one is a folder owned by someone else or another account, and the second is the files themselves since thats two different types of permissions.

You'll figure it out...
 
Hiren's Boot CD or a similar one is what you need...and all you'll ever need.

Recently I recovered a excel file from a formated hard disk with it.
 
Hiren's Boot CD is "classically" defined as a warez laden product so, discussion of its use around here can be a big issue. I do know (since I get around, and reading the contents of the disc are on the main website) that the developer has done a lot to remove almost everything of a commercial nature from the disc, and it's about 99% free content now (open source or outright freeware products) but it's still got some stuff it shouldn't...

loljustsaiyan.jpg
 
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