Augeas

Yes, I'll third that, blooming annoying when it happens.

Well, browsing is initially slow after a clean as all the guff on frequently used pages has to be downloaded again instead of being retrieved from temp internet files, but I suspect you're knowlegeable enough to know that.

Can you access the hard drive at all or run Windows on it? Do you want to archive stuff from the hard drive or remove sensitive info?

Aye, 'appen. I've just looked at the properties of Windows, Program Files, i386 and Documents and Settings on the C drive and added up the file counts (that should be most of the little devils). It comes to 32480. So If I add a few more for the odd smaller folders then Recuva's figure of 34339 seems quite reasonable. One more win for Recuva. Eh up, lad!

Both Les and Rac said that they recovered files and couldnt open them. This was before the posts about the recycler renaming deleted files. So what filenames were recovered? It doesnt seem that either DC or $R files were recovered, so what was? You know I cant enter an apostrophe, the stupid screen goes straight to find mode. Stupid stupid computers.

Thanks, Hish.

Thanks Rac, yes, I was referring to XP (the OP gives no clue to the O/S). Actually (because of this thread) I dumped a doc file to the recycler then deleted it, and it was found under its own name with Recuva. I recovered it and could open it fine. In XP, that is. So I am going to stop rambling on about this. Do you think that Vista scrambles the contents of the files it holds/deletes from the recycler? Do you know what the Word converter is? Good links, by the way.

Could you find your deleted files by filename?

Yes, I've been doing this for several years, actually called Crap. If only CC had a context menu option to run CC on this folder alone, or the option to run Included folders only....

You're not on any sort of crusade, are you Kenny? I think that Piriform should write an application that runs forever, constantly seeking and overwriting anything it finds, then cycling round and starting again ad infinitum. Eventually the disk will fall to its knees. Still, with all those West African hustlers running electron scanning microscopes in clean rooms on your old disk platters, just in case there's some useful info there, you can't be too careful.

I think that that would only work if you have saved settings in the ini file - I don't have one to delete. I don't know what the defaults are, everything ticked in Applications, nothing ticked in Advanced, and most of the others ticked? Perhaps a good rule to start with is to tick all those you understand and want ticked, and leave the others alone. Ah, I've just noticed who you are (the font is rather a giveaway).

Yes, no, maybe, usually... In general I would say that it is safe to delete these files, in the context that your pc will still work. However some options can cause inconvenience or annoyance. (You do not say what options you have ticked.) Some of these options will lose settings or passwords or login info which you may want to hang onto. I would not tick anything that brings up a warning message, or anything you don't know what affect it will have. I believe the settings are explained in the user guide, but it's a long time since I looked at that. I wouldn't tick Autocomplete Form History, and possibly nothing in Advanced until you get the hang of it.

You cannot remove the deleted file names that Recuva lists from the MFT. This is quite normal with use on any pc, I should just live with it. You can overwrite the files if you wish, but the filenames will remain.

Do you mean that you open CC, look at the cookies, run CC, then go back to the cookies page and they're still displayed? My list, like Disk4, is cleared. Are you sure that the cookies have gone? Or do you you mean that you run CC, close CC, open again and the cookies are still there? The only time I have this is when I leave FF open, but that's obvious and there's a warning message.

What I forgot to mention in regards to the OP is that files sent to the recycler and then deleted will be renamed to something like Dcim.doc (I don't use the recycler so I can't be more specific). So these files are the ones to recover. I don't know what files Les recovered. I have just recovered a .doc file and it opens fine with Word 2002: I don't have an .xls file to recover, but I'm sure I've recovered them previously, as a test, and they were open/readable with no problem. I don't know if the files you are trying to open are some sort of temp edit copies, in some compressed/coded form. I really don't know what the Office suite does, at that level. I think that most of these threads show that Recuva is no substitute for the occasional backup.

Two seconds on Google brings up many hits for iadhide.dll, including this.... http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/t1015471974 There is too much info in there to reproduce, so take a look and see if any of it applies to you. It appears to be part of Backweb, whatever that is, and uninstalling BW gets rid of it.

As far as I know the file status is a condition that Recuva attempts to determine, and from my experience is not to be taken as evidence that a file has been securely deleted or not (it's a software guess). File status does seem, in some cases, to change in subsequent runs. I would take evidence of secure deletion as the file header showing zeroes (I do one overwrite). In your case, as you are using multiple overwrites, then the file header is no help: I would take as evidence if the preview shows a picture or if the file can be recovered to its original state. Can you recover any file that you have securely deleted? I have never done a mass file secure delete with Recuva, but 10 mins for 2000 files with multiple overwrite seems far too short, but I may as usual be wrong. You could change your file deletion to one overwrite, do a mass delete, and then quickly scan down the file headers looking for zeroes. It's complicated as you will have to stop for files in the MFT and files that are overwritten by another file, so it isn't an easy job. Just to clarify, although you selected files in excellent/poor status and deleted then successfully, it doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't deleted already. Don't put too much faith in the file status. A file will only change its status of being resident in the MFT if it is edited and increased in length so that it no longer fits in the MFT entry. A deleted file, being uneditable, will remain resident in the MFT until it is overwritten by a new file creation, and the new file may or may not then be resident in the MFT depending on its size.

Ah, look what happens when you give us all these options... I selected zero byte, system and deleted files and ran a normal scan, which returned 13067 files. I then selected scan for undeleted files, and the total went up to 47406. Tek wun from 'tother, as they say in Yorkshire (oh do keep up, Davey) and you get 34339 undeleted files. Yet when I run a virus scan it scans 67000 files. I haven't run an a/v scan recently, but I know I haven't dumped some 33000 files. So why doesn't Recuva show all the undeleted files?

Have you tried to delete Temp Int Files and/or Cookies through Tools in your IE7 browser?

Godw, are you saying that running with the prior version cleans all registry issues with no problem, then installing the latest version brings up 6000 issues? These issues look as if they have been there, and accumulating, for some time. Most of the file extensions, f'rinstance, seem a little arcane with only a few I recognise and would say are important. I have not noticed this behaviour on my own pc with the latest vers. Do you use an ini file?

You have recovered Inbox.dbx and it's somewhere safe...? I can't remember the actual details of attaching an existing folder to OE, you will have to rename it to something like Inboxold.dbx so it doesn't clash with your new Inbox, then either guess or wait for someone to supply the answer.

Well, I would stop doing any mass registry cleans (personally I hardly ever remove stuff from the reg, but I certainly don't have 6000 issues). If you can identify known issues, such as all that AOL stuff and you've swept AOL out of your pc, then get rid of those. I know it's more painstaking that way but it seems that doing a mass clean is removing something that your pc needs. That is probably quite difficult to find. In the end living with some registry issues is no great deal, to most of us anyway.

Have you tried the Scan for Non-deleted Files option? (Try this with normal scan, deep scan takes forever.) Recuva does not recover individual emails. OE emails in XP - live and deleted - are kept in something like C:\Documents and Settings\Myname\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{DFF16927-88E6-4EAA-A097-460B7E65289B}\Microsoft\Outlook Express\Foldername.dbx, so if you could find this file using the above option you could recover it to another drive and then open it with OE.

I gather you're saying that all the file names remain, and not that the files can be recovered after secure deletion? Recover does not overwrite the file names or location info in the MFT. Recuva doesn't overwrite anything in the MFT at all. If you want the file names overwritten then there are applications which will do this. This is the nature of Recuva and its big bro CCleaner, they are not disk wipers. How long did your big erase take, by the way?

Has anyone ever had a compete display in thumbnails view? It's a very handy option ('cos not all pics have a pukka pic extension) but after paging down about 35 times I get a blank screen. It's probably something to do with my pc spec (XP2 Home, 1 G Ram, 3 G P4).