Lost Data

[Tom Robertson]

My computer just locked up. The message said something about a file
called "kernel." When I restarted it, I checked for viruses. There
were 2, which were removed. Now, among several other things which are
different about my computer, every file I had open in Microsoft Word
has lost the last 4 months of data. Is there a way to recover this
data?

 

[Jay Freedman]

It's a sad story... Got backups? If not, you'll have to try to
reconstruct the files.

 

[Tom Robertson]

It's a sad story... Got backups? If not, you'll have to try to
reconstruct the files.

The weirdest thing just happened with my computer. Normally, when it
locks up and Microsoft Word files haven't been saved, after I reboot,
they'll automatically open when I open the program and say "recovered"
on them. From bitter experience, I've learned that if I don't save
them before the computer locks up again, I'll lose what wasn't saved
before the first lockup. So I saved them, only to find that 4 months
of data from several files was gone. But I just now rebooted my
computer and got most of my files back the way they were before the
first lockup. I'd sure like to know how this happened.

 

[Jay Freedman]

The weirdest thing just happened with my computer. Normally, when it
locks up and Microsoft Word files haven't been saved, after I reboot,
they'll automatically open when I open the program and say "recovered"
on them. From bitter experience, I've learned that if I don't save
them before the computer locks up again, I'll lose what wasn't saved
before the first lockup. So I saved them, only to find that 4 months
of data from several files was gone. But I just now rebooted my
computer and got most of my files back the way they were before the
first lockup. I'd sure like to know how this happened.

It sounds just as amazing and unexplainable to me as it does to you.
Weird things do happen in computers, but they're usually not good
things.

I'm happy for you, but I'll repeat the warning of my first reply: BACK
UP! Especially something that has many months of data in it should be
copied to removable media (possibly more than one), and verified as
re-readable, and then stored away from the computer. You should never
have only one copy of anything of value on any PC; they're inherently
unreliable.

 

[Graham Mayor]

It is likely to be attributable to the temporary files Word creates to
manage documents - see
http://www.gmayor.com/what_to_do_when_word_crashes.htm

I am curious about the comment 'when it locks up'. Frankly this should not
be a regular occurrence. There are things that will cause Word to crash, but
recent versions on Windows XP are pretty stable.

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP
E-mail (e-mail address removed)
Web site www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site www.mvps.org/word
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