If this relates to the recovery of a deleted file, windows doesn't 
actually delete files.  Trying not to be too technical, a file that has 
been deleted simply has a small electronic bit of it changed to say that 
it is deleted - windows sets the delete flag 'on'.  By doing that, 
windows now makes the space available for use by another document, 
program or something else, when it will eventually write over the 
previous data or file.
Depending on how important the file is that is lost, the best option is 
to use another computer to access the drive containing the file and 
attempt to recover or 'undelete' the file.  If you install a program on 
the same hard drive, you run some risk of overwriting the file with the 
new program.  By running a program, you run the risk of writing the 
output from that program to the old file space.
So, if you have access to the computer through another computer on a  
network, install a recovery program on the 2nd computer.  You may also 
be able to remove the hard drive and install it as a slave drive in a 
second computer, installing recovery software on the second computer's 
primary drive.  In both cases, it's best to try to write the recovered 
file onto a different drive (even a usb drive) to make sure you got back 
the missing file completely before you risk writing over it on the 
original drive.
Paul Hachmeyer
        

[log in to unmask] wrote:

>I would be interested to know what happens if one only has one drive.
> 
>Dorothy Jones
>  
>

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