Local host - crash

[Saratoga]

Living in an area with slow internet combined with the desire to completely rebuild a currently live website, led me to the world and learning curve of 'local host's', AMPPS and developing it all offline.

I am using Windows 7, AMPPS 4.6.3

I installed WP, a new theme, followed by a phpBB forum ... I was really forging ahead. All was performing brilliantly and I was very pleased with my learning curve and development results.

4 weeks in and one morning after a routine virus scan update, SuperAntiSpyware, I noticed that my desktop icon for AMPPS had been altered to a generic wondows icon. Needless to say, AMPPS would not run, returning file and page not found errors.

So knowing just enough to get into trouble, I uninstalled and reinstalled AMPPS. Prior to doing so I copied all of the files within the .../.../ampps/www folder. At this point it hit me like a light, I had not done an internal backup of either, the WP site nor the php forum .

So here I am now pondering how I might recover my data to continue development ? ...
Or must I start at square one again ?

[borgasm]

There are tools around to recover lost files. Basically when a file gets deleted it doesnt wipe the hard drive of the file, it ust deletes the pointer to where to find it and frees the space up to be re-written. so long as nothing has been written over those sectors you can recover your lost files with a bit of luck. Hopefully someone else on here knows the name of some of these tools as I have forgotten so much of what I used to know. If noone gives some solutions soon I'll have a look and see what I can find for you.

[borgasm]

doing a quick search online led me to this tool . Shitty instructions for its use

I can try and help you through it if you need but its been a while since I've done help desk duties

(I used to be a programmer, help desk support, and onsite computer support guy but that was a long time ago)

[INKoRP]

I've used Undelete many moons ago with success, key is, the more the HDD is used after the fact the smaller your chances are going to be of getting it back uncorrupted.

[cug]

i've used getdataback with success:
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

[borgasm]

Ive used that one in the past too Cug, couldnt think of the name of it though. Try that one Toga.

[Saratoga]

Thanks guys...

Im on that all to common crest of knowing more than enough to get a nice result, and knowing just enough to get into trouble... combined with the increasingly common days of 'brain fart' where I cant even properly explain the issue.

The proper issue was that the local host software crashed. When I reinstalled AAMPS I could not load the website files.
I presume it was due to internal address conflicts created by the local host software and the word press files and not a case of damaged/lost data.

I have d/l and sussed out those suggested prog's to no success.
Suffice to say, I couldnt sort it out. So I have started over again, this time making backups every hour or so of work.
Hopefully I wont require them in future, but are great to have at hand.

Cheers

[borgasm]

Im glad it was a bit simpler than trying to recover delete files but sometimes trying to get that stuff to all work together drives me mad. Thats why I build tennis courts now and dont work with computers