Is there any way to recover a document after you have deleted it, and emptied your recycle bin?

Answer 1

No. (Unless you saved a copy somewhere else). ~

Answer 2

Restoration is a freeware program by Brian Kato that restores deleted files no longer in the Recycle Bin. The good news is that it works not only on Windows 9x versions, but also on Windows NT, 2000, and XP — even in NTFS! It fits neatly on a floppy, since it is only 406 KB in size (and the Windows 2000/XP version is less than half that size), but you can also run it from your hard drive. I recommend you be prepared to use either option.


When a file is deleted from your computer, its contents aren’t immediately destroyed. Windows simply marks the hard drive space as being available for use by changing one character in the file table so that the file entry won’t be displayed in My Computer or a commandline DIR command, etc. If you manage to start an undeletion process before Windows uses that part of the hard drive to write a new file, all you have to do is set that flag back to “on,” and you get the file. Pretty cool, eh?

Obviously, the sooner you try to restore a file, the more successful you’ll be. But stop a moment and think about the other things that could cause this part of the hard drive to be overwritten. If your hard drive is pretty full, the odds are much greater that Windows will grab your precious unallocated space for its next write. Or, if you defrag the hard drive, you run the risk of unused parts of the drive being overwritten! (This also means that if you are running silent background defrag services like Diskeeper, or if you have defrag utilities scheduled to defrag automatically, you might get blindsided — lose your chance at data recovery — if you don’t halt them until you have your deleted file recovered

Answer 3

You can try shugh8's answer but another option is to buy a file recovery program. I've had a lot of success with a program called Recover My Files but there are plenty of competing applications available at your local computer shop.

With any recovery program, be aware that they are not guaranteed to work as deleting a file notifies the operating system that the space is free for reuse. In most cases the programs work but if you have a small amount of free space or you do a lot of frequent writing to disk your chances decrease. Until you recover the file try to avoid using the system to ensure a greater chance of recovery.

Answer 4

Search the web for undelete.exe. This is a small program that recovers files. http://www.handyrecovery.com

Unless you have made massive changes to your computer, deleted files are never really deleted unless you have written over the file. When a file is deleted, the file is renamed by replacing the first letter of the filename with a symbol. This tells the computer that this file space can be used.

Use a disk editor or hex-editor, search your drive for deleted files (shown with the greek symbol sigma as the first character) and find your deleted file. Once found, rename the first character with any letter and write the changes.

Answer 5

There are a lot of recovery programs out there, most of which you have to pay for. Here's a list of free file recovery applications from download.com:

http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0-1-0.html?qt=file+recovery&author=&titlename=&desc=&dlcount=&daysback=&swlink=&gfiletype=&os=&li=49&dlsize=&ca=

Answer 6

Try this software. It worked for me.
http://www.cbltech.com/data-recovery/software/recover-lost-data/

Answer 7

There might be just one chance. If you do a system restore. restore your computer to an earlier point in time. That just might get your file back. However. I wouldn't get your hopes up.