Hey I’m having a problem opening the downloaded recuva installer file it just won’t open . I am using an old pc with windows xp and I really need help to restore picture files that recently were wiped out due to a system restore I did . Since I had no backup restoration date to undo this restoration, I have been in panic mode and was hoping recuva would work . Thanks
Firstly I don't know why it won't install for you, AFAIK it still works with XP.
Where did you download Recuva from?
What error message are you seeing, if any?
More importantly though you should not be installing anything on that XP machine, you should not even be using it if you want to maximise your chances of recovering files from it,
The more you use that drive the more chance there is that the lost data will get overwritten.
Ideally you should be taking the drive out of that machine completely, and then using Recuva installed on a different machine to recover what you can from the drive.
Plus of course you should be recoving it to a different drive so that what is being recovered isn't overwriting other stuff you want to recover.
In this case the files you are after were not 'deleted', they were overwritten by a restore, so I believe your best bet to start with will be using Recuva's Advanced Mode to search for non-deleted files on the drive.
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Since WinXP is old it could be an OS issue with the installed antivirus being unable to read the signed digital signature of the installer since WinXP can't read modern digital signatures, and if an installed antivirus on that OS also can't somehow read them they have the potential of just outright blocking installation. Although it could be some other issue.
You should be able to unpack the installer with 7-Zip or 7-Zip Portable.