b_rich

Thanks for your reply. Unfortunately the Windows recovery files are too big to fit on a DVD. My USB bootable flash drive has 5.1gb on it. I made the bootable drive through the Recovery section on Windows 10 control panel. I thought I could just put recuva portable on it and it would work through the command prompt but it doesn't. However I've found a solution. I downloaded the Hiren BootCD from https://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/ This includes recuva. I tested it just now and recuva works normally.

Thanks for your reply. Yeah it's booting that does it and it's annoying. I do think this needs some attention though. Using recuva from a bootable USB is important. It's not just a nothing problem. I'm sure this isn't an uncommon situation - you have a computer that won't start in Windows or even safe mode and you want to recover your data. An obvious solution is to copy the portable version of recuva to a bootable Windows 10 USB memory stick and then you find that the computer boots from the stick fine, recuva finds the recoverable files but then you can't save the recovered files. I'm sure you can understand how annoying that is. I hope you're in a position to get something done about this because it's not right. I would appreciate it if you could have someone investigate. Thanks.

Thanks for your reply. Yes it works but does it really work? Are you using your portable recuva in the same way as me? If I put my USB memory stick into a working computer and double click on recuva64.exe in File Explorer then it works as normal. It also works if I run it from the command prompt. But if I boot from the USB stick, which also contains the Windows 10 recovery programs, then recuva has the problem I described. Have you ever done that? I'd be interested to hear if you have done that without any problems and, if so, I'd appreciate it if you could offer any tips. I'd just like to know how your USB drive could be different to mine. Several people have had this problem here and probably a lot more that we don't know about. I don't think putting recuva onto a USB flash drive along with the Windows 10 recovery programs is an unusual thing to do and so I don't know why recuva wouldn't work in that situation. Thanks.

Hello again, I didn't do a good search for this issue initially but have since found three threads on the same problem. So this is a problem that has been around since 2010 without a solution yet. It seems to me that this isn't just a bug but a fatal bug. Basically the portable version of recuva doesn't work. Being able to work from a USB memory stick or some other media storage device is an important thing for a data recovery program. For me it was a big reason why I chose recuva over some of the other software available. In many instances it can be the only way for recuva to access the drive. Despite the importance of this problem there doesn't seem to be any urgency to fix it. Sorry for the rant but, in my opinion, this is crucially important. I'm surprised that no one seems bothered. Thanks for any replies.

Hello, I've put recuva portable version on a USB memory stick along with the Windows 10 recovery files. When I boot to the USB, select the command prompt and run recuva64.exe it doesn't work properly. It's probably a fault with me rather than the program. Working through the wizard, at the point where I'm asked for the location of the deleted files the Browse button by the "In a specific location" choice doesn't give any drives or folders - the window that pops up is blank. If I type the location in myself recuva does the scan and finds the deleted files. Similar to the previous situation when I try to select where to save the recovered files the Browse for Folder pop up window is blank. I've been testing this on a working computer. Does anyone have any ideas why this doesn't work? I'd appreciate any advice. Thanks.