I had a windows update when I went to restart my computer so I did and it comes back up 5-10 minutes later and I realize my gamekeys document that was on my desktop is now missing, I tried a restore from 2 days prior and that did nothing I also tried a deep scanning recovery tool which also didn't seem to find anything either, although I know I would never delete it, anyone else have any idea if I could possibly get it back somehow..

9 years ago

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9 years ago
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Try checking up on C:\users\<username>\desktop and see if the files still exist ... sometimes files are still there without showing and
be sure to view all files in there - including the hidden ones, if there is nothing in it try searching your desktop folder ... had once a case
where the file wouldn't show until i searched for it in the folder. Else better try another recovery tool, can't exactly recommend any in
particular - i use myself Recuva rarely which is free and simple to use.

Also best not to save your most important files on the desktop that update might've swept your desktop folder clean - it isn't regarded
as a important folder by the windows os ... more of a temporary folder that might get ignored by windows system recovery.

9 years ago*
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Best not to save anything important in C: actually

9 years ago
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Agree, want to open file fast from desktop, using shortcut instead.

9 years ago
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If a good recovery utility (My personal pick is File Scavenger - the demo only supports files up to 64KB but that's perfect for your case) didn't work then I could only think of one very ugly solution. If the document was a text file instead of Microsoft Office (.docx is compressed) and you knew an exact, case-sensitive string that was in the original document (e.g. "Woodle Tree Adventures" or even better, an exact key that appears on the list) then you could boot into Linux and do a hexadecimal search on your raw hard drive to see where that string occurs. If the list is still on your hard drive then it would eventually show up. This would be a very slow and painful process, but you could try it with a hex editor that supports huge files such as wxHexEditor.

Big caveat here though: as you know, Windows doesn't overwrite files with zeros when you delete them, as you can undelete in some cases. This also applies to when you edit and save a file; a file will rarely overwrite itself in place. This could potentially mean that on your disk drive there are several copies of your key list floating around, and unless you could tell by looking at them it would be impossible to know which was the last/latest version. You may have to do some deduction by remembering the last few keys that were added or removed from the list.

9 years ago*
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Lost like 50$ in such way, because my Windows crashed and I had to restore to the factory condition =d
Now I store all the important txt files in/on clouds =P

9 years ago
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Got it thanks

9 years ago
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