Unable to choose Recover drive\folder

[ericz]

I am attempting to recover files from a laptop that will not boot from the hard drive.

 

I have booted using a Bart PE CD with Recuva on a USB flash drive. Recuva has found lots of files however when I click the Recover... button I get a blank dialog with 3 buttons at the bottom. Below "Select location for recover", there is nothing!

 

I think a standard File Open dialog will fail when it cannot find C:\. For example, the Bart PE File Management Utility does not work for apparently this reason.

 

Is there a way to set the default location for recovery to be my flash drive?

[redhawk]

The folder selection window is blank because "SHBrowseForFolder" function doesn't work under BartPE.

You can correct this by using the XPE plugin or by using the solution as stated below.

 

In the meantime there is another tool you could use called Handy Recovery, click on the download page the freeware version is located at the bottom.

Handy Recovery also suffers from the browse folder problem but at least you're able to manually enter the path for the destination drive.

 

Richard S.

[SeeW]

I am attempting to recover files from a laptop that will not boot from the hard drive.

 

I have booted using a Bart PE CD with Recuva on a USB flash drive. Recuva has found lots of files however when I click the Recover... button I get a blank dialog with 3 buttons at the bottom. Below "Select location for recover", there is nothing!

 

I think a standard File Open dialog will fail when it cannot find C:\. For example, the Bart PE File Management Utility does not work for apparently this reason.

 

Is there a way to set the default location for recovery to be my flash drive?

I had the same issue. Co-incidentally I lost an H: drive which was a RAID10 array of 4 disks. Luckily I keep my system drive separate so I could reboot OK. I had the same issue of a blank dialogue box when selecting the recovery folder and found this was due to my user profile being deleted along with the failed array. Once restored, it was OK and I could recover the files.

[redhawk]

I did some searching today and I'm happy to say I have found a solution for the missing folder problem.

It turns out there are registry keys missing which you can fix by applying a registry patch or by rebuilding the ISO using the information here.

 

To apply the registry patch you must save the following text to a file called fix.reg to your flash drive:

 

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Shell.Application]

@="Shell Automation Service"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Shell.Application\CLSID]

@="{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Shell.Application\CurVer]

@="Shell.Application.1"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Shell.Application.1]

@="Shell Automation Service"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Shell.Application.1\CLSID]

@="{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}]

@="Shell Automation Service"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}\InProcServer32]

@="SHELL32.dll"

"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}\ProgID]

@="Shell.Application.1"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}\TypeLib]

@="{50a7e9b0-70ef-11d1-b75a-00a0c90564fe}"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}\Version]

@="1.1"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{13709620-C279-11CE-A49E-444553540000}\VersionIndependentProgID]

@="Shell.Application"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{43A8F463-4222-11d2-B641-006097DF5BD4}]

@="Shell Name Space ListView"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{43A8F463-4222-11d2-B641-006097DF5BD4}\InProcServer32]

@="shdocvw.dll"

"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{603D3800-BD81-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}]

@="Background Task Scheduler"

 

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{603D3800-BD81-11d0-A3A5-00C04FD706EC}\InProcServer32]

@="browseui.dll"

"ThreadingModel"="Apartment"

Boot up BartPE and then import the registry keys with regedit or by running fix.reg

After that you should be able to use Recuva or Handy Recovery without any problems

 

Richard S.

[ericz]

Redhawk, your suggestion worked like a charm! After applying the reg file, the Recover dialog worked as expected and I was able to recover most all the files I had changed since my last backup.

 

Thanks for the help!

[Lisa Blake]

I have the same problem, except I am not using BartPE.

I have a laptop running windows 7 x64. I think it might be Windows PE at this point. I am trying to recover non deleted files that have lost their directory. I downloaded and installed Recuva to my pc, also windows 7 x64. I followed the directions to put it on a usb stick and I am running it on the usb on my laptop.

I am able to run recuva64. It does the scan and finds files. When I hit the recover button it opens to the "Browse For Folder" screen but there are not any locations to choose. It just has a the words "Select location for recovery" and the 3 buttons at the bottom. It sounds like the exact same problem as above. I even tried putting in that fix but it didn't work.

If you have any other ideas I would really appreciate hearing them.

Thank you, Lisa

[redhawk]

I suspect the registry keys do not work for 64bit windows because of references to shell32.dll and not shell64.dll

Without access to 64bit Windows it's not possible to fix, you could however use Hiren's Boot CD "Mini XP" which is a bootable copy of 32bit XP.

The beauty of Mini XP is you have a workable Windows Explorer shell with support for networking and hot swapping USB flash drives.

Also if I recall correctly you do not need to patch the registry because it already has the correct registry entries for Recuva to work.

 

Richard S.

[Lisa Blake]

Thank you very much. I used Hiren's Boot CD to boot up the laptop. I was then able to finish the recovery process.

Lisa

[Guest MrRon]

We will add the option to manually enter a recovery path in the next release

[pdeinc]

Similar problem here, did a Disk Cleanup which somehow managed to delete virtually every single file on the harddrive. Apparently the only ones not deleted were the ones in use. WinXP is still running and Explorer works but no applications will run. Installed Recuva on a flash stick and it finds all the missing files and although I selected the 'Recover folder structure' option, I get the same blank Browse For Folder dialog box.

 

I don't want to alter the drive in any way by loading anything onto it for fear of overwriting valuable data. What to do from here?

[redhawk]

Download and burn Hiren's Boot CD

Boot into Mini XP

Run InstallHWPnP (it enables hot plugging USB devices)

Run Recuva and save your files to USB flash drive.

 

Richard S.

[rnsc]

Using Windows 7 Pro x86 (32 bit), I have the same problem. I booted from the MS Windows 7 Pro installcation disk and picked the path through the "Repair" paths to get to a command prompt. Then I navigated to a USB drive and ran the recuva .exe

 

The solutions mentioned so far seem to be oriented toward XP (registry keys, other bottable disks). Win7's NTFS is different than XP's. I am not familiar in depth, and this is a work PC so I can't mess it up.

 

Any suggestions?

 

There is only one file. If I know the path can I put it on a command line somehow?

 

Is there a beta of the version where I can type the restore path?

 

Thanks.

[redhawk]

You're correct the reg keys only work for XP 32bit and not Vista / Windows 7 so you'll have to wait for a Recuva update.

As for accessing file via XP i.e. Bart PE, Hiren's Mini XP, you should be able to do this on any NTFS formatted drive even Windows 7 because NTFS is backwards compatible (file access).

Since Recuva recovers files by low level disk reads it doesn't matter what OS it runs on just as long as it has full read access to your drive.

The only thing that could cause problems is if you're using Windows 7 disk compression or bitlocker encryption since they're not supported in Windows XP.

 

Richard S.

[rnsc]

Thank you... I was concerned about recuva writing to a Windows 7 file system. If it does not understand the Windows 7 enhancements/extensions, then it may muck up the file system in writing the files to the recovery target. But I guess it does not matter if it is just a transient file system to be abandoned after the recovered files are copied off. If there any problems cropped up, I could create it as an XP file system.

 

Another way occurred to me, and it worked perfectly. It avoids all issues. Instead of recovering from the in-place boot Windows 7 file system on my laptop, running from a full-fledged throw-away Windows 7 system to recover a block for block copy (image) of the damaged file system on another (external) drive. I captured an image of the file system to a file for safe keeping, then dumped it to an identically sized partition on an external drive. I boot the laptop, so that it running *real* Windows 7, and recover the files from the partition on the external drive. I don't care that the running copy of Windows will tromp all over my data, since I have both the copy on the external drive that I am recovering from, and a safe copy in a file somewhere else. This system will have *all* Windows 7 capabilities to host Recuva! If I mess up somehow, I can restore my image and try again. Best of all worlds.

 

So:

 

Make image copy (Linux dd) of file system to be recovered and save it securely:

dd if=/dev/sda1 | gzip -c > preciousImage.gz

 

Get size of partition:

cat /proc/partitions | grep sda1

 

Create NTFS partition on an external drive of the same size (Larger would be fine too) (Could be done with any partitioning utility, as long as you set the partition type to NTFS/HFS).

 

gunzip -c < preciousImage.gz > /dev/sde1

 

Boot the PC. It will scribble all over the unused blocks with your data on the C: drive. If that disk was damaged and not bootable, you can replace the disk and reinstall Windows.

 

Run Recuva, pointing it to the partition on the external drive with your image snapshot. Recover the files, copying them to either *another* external drive, or to c:, or wherever you want them. All Recuva dialogs etc. will work just fine.

 

Hope this helps someone!

 

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Related but new subject.

 

I would argue that Recuva should work with *whatever* is provided by the repair/recover mode of the Windows distribution disk. If it cannot provide a library routine or supporting capabilities to browse the disk, then Recuva should have that code. By nature of its mission in life, it is going to be trying to run in restricted environments from boot media.

 

It would be really nice if there were a Recuva.iso that can be booted to recover, but I understand that there would be licensing problems, requiring alot of work re-writing all of the Windows functions depended on, or hosting Recuva on another system such as Linux.

 

Note also, as I am sure the author knows, there is another dialog that doesn't work either (I forget which one).

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Recuva is an outstanding piece of software, very well designed and easy to use. The documentation is simple and clear. Thank you! One of the best I have seen. I will certainly be making a donation.

[thewalter]

On 04/01/2011 at 07:51, MrRon said:

We will add the option to manually enter a recovery path in the next release

 

Its 2020...why didn't you?