Your PowerPoint presentation is beautiful. It’s perfect. It’s…where is it? Click the Start menu, type the file’s name, and see what turns up. Maybe you’ve renamed it accidentally. Click Start, type a word that’s in the presentation but not in many other files, and  see if that gets better results. If it pulls up a lot of results, click  See More Results so that you can sort the found files by date. No luck? Try the Recycle Bin. Maybe you deleted the file.

Dead end? Don’t panic. You can always restore the file from the backup you made yesterday.

You  don’t back up? Well, you should, but as for the file you need to find today, you’ll have to  use file-recovery software. Before I discuss specific programs, I need  to lay down one absolute rule about using them: Until you’ve either  recovered the file or given up, do not write to your hard drive. Following this rule requires you to use portable file-recovery software. Download the utility on another PC and save it  to a flash drive. Plug that drive into your PC, and launch the program  from there.

The rule also means that you shouldn’t restore your file to its original location. Save it to the flash drive, as well.

With luck, either of the following two utilities will be able to find and recover your missing file. First, try the free Recuva Portable. It’s fast and simple, it can preview image formats, and it works reliably most of the time.

If that doesn’t work, try Software Shelf’s File-Rescue Plus.  It costs $40, but you can recover up to five files with the free demo  version. Strictly speaking, File-Rescue Plus isn’t portable, but you  have a work-around. Install it onto another computer, and then copy the  program file, FileRescuePlus.exe, to your flash drive. After you pay the  $40, use Notepad to create a file called key.ini containing nothing but the license key that Software Shelf sent you  after you bought the program. Place key.ini on the flash drive, in the  same folder as the program file.

The original article appeared on infoworld.

If your regular antivirus program — the  one you already have up and running — hasn’t stopped the questionable  software, it probably can’t. What you need is a second opinion, and  possibly a third and a fourth.

Start with the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware,  a utility with an exceptional record of finding and removing malware.  Download it, install it, launch it, update the database, and then  perform a full scan.

Since installing and updating a cleaning  utility are tasks that the infection may interfere with, it’s a good  idea to follow your Malwarebytes scan with other scans that don’t  require an installation or even an update.

On someone else’s PC, download SuperAntiSpyware Portable and copy it to a flash drive. Boot the infected PC into Safe Mode, plug  in the flash drive, and run the program. Since SuperAntiSpyware.com  updates the portable program every day or two, you don’t need to update  it before the scan.

For a fourth opinion, try the F-Secure Rescue CD.  This is another .iso file from which you can burn a bootable CD. Just  boot from the CD and run the scan. The program will try to update its  database over the Internet. If it can’t, you can download an update on  another PC, put it on a flash drive, and keep that plugged in while  running F-Secure on the infected PC.

The original article appeared on infoworld.

If the wrong person leaves your company in a huff, one or more PCs could be left stranded. With no one in the  company knowing the password to an administrator-level account, you  can’t install software, change important settings, or possibly access  encrypted data.

Fortunately, you can remove the password, letting you log on to that account. You do that with the Offline NT Password & Registry Editor,  a bootable, text-based free program that you download as an .iso file.  Double-click that file, and Windows 7 will start the process of burning  it to a CD.

Boot the CD and follow these instructions. I’ve put the on-screen prompts in italics. After you type your answer, press Enter.

boot: Just press Enter.

Select: [1]: Above the prompt you’ll see a list of hard-drive partitions. Select the right one by typing that number.

What is the path to the registry directory?…: The default is probably correct. Just press Enter.

[1]: 1

What to do? [1] ->: 1

or simply enter the username…:  Type the name of the administrator account. If you’re not sure what it  is, all of the account names are listed above the prompt.

Select: [q] >: 1

Select: ! – quit…: !

What to do [1]: q

About to write file(s) back…: y

New run? [n]: n

# Remove the CD and reboot.

You should now be able to log on to the administrator account without a password. For security purposes, don’t forget to create a new password for the account. Just be sure to remember what it is.

The original article appeared in infoworld.

Windows 7 keeps logs of “Stop Errors.” To view the logs and make sense of them, download and run BlueScreenView,  a free, portable program by NirSoft that shows you what drivers  were running at the time of the crash, and highlights the likeliest  suspects. If the same drivers come up from multiple crashes, you should  definitely update them.

Speaking of updating drivers, you should make sure that all of them are current. SlimWare Utilities’ free SlimDrivers makes this chore remarkably easy, as it scans Windows and lists which  drivers need to be updated. If you register (that’s free, too), it will  find the drivers and run the update for you. It even offers to create a  restore point before each update. Don’t update all of your drivers at  once, however; if you do, and one of them makes things worse, you’ll  have a tough time figuring out which one.

Frequent BSoDs can also  be a sign of hardware problems, especially bad RAM. Although Windows 7  has its own memory-diagnostics program, I prefer the free Memtest86+,  which you have to boot separately. You can download the program either  as an .iso file — from which you can create a bootable CD — or as an .exe  file that will install the program and its bootable operating system  onto a flash drive.

The original articles appeared in infoworld.

If Windows can’t boot because the PC can’t read the hard drive, none  of the previous solutions will work. But that’s not the worst of it: Unless  you have a very up-to-date backup,  all of your files are locked away on a possibly dead hard drive.  Secondary drives you don’t boot off of, both internal and external, also  can die with important data locked away on them.

If the drive is  making noises that you’ve never heard before, shut off the PC  immediately. In that case you have only one possible solution, and it’s  expensive: Send the drive to a data-retrieval service. Drivesavers and Kroll Ontrack are the best known, although they’re not necessarily better than  smaller, cheaper companies. Expect to pay hundreds or even thousands of  dollars. If your drive sounds OK, you may be able to recover  the files with GetData’s Recover My Files. The  free, demo version of Recover My Files will show you which files  can be  recovered and even display their contents. Once you’ve paid the  $70  license fee, the program can copy the files to another drive. If  that  doesn’t work, you’ll need to use a retrieval service.

If  the sick drive is the one you use to boot Windows, you’ll have to  remove it from the PC and access it on another computer. You can do so  by making it a secondary drive in a desktop PC.

The original article appeared in infoworld.

If turning on your PC doesn’t bring you into Windows, try booting from a Windows 7 DVD or a recovery disc. You  may already have the DVD. If Windows 7 didn’t come with your computer  but you installed it yourself, you have the disc. If you don’t have it,  you can borrow someone else’s disc. Alternatively you can borrow  someone else’s Windows 7 computer and use it to create a System Repair  Disc (you can also do this on your own PC before it has a problem). To  create the disc, click Start, type system repair, select Create a System Repair Disc, and follow the prompts.

If  your computer won’t boot from the CD, go into its setup screen and  change the boot order so that the optical or CD/DVD drive comes before  the hard drive. I can’t tell you exactly how to do this because it differs  from one PC to another. When you first turn on the computer, look for  an on-screen message telling you to press a particular key “for setup.” When the CD boots, follow the prompts. Likely the utility will tell you very soon  that there’s a problem, and it will ask if you want to fix the problem.  You do.

If it doesn’t ask you, or if the disc can’t fix the issue, you’ll see a menu with various options. Startup Repair and System Restore are both worth trying.

If  your PC fails before you can enter setup or boot from a CD, you have  a  hardware problem. If you’re not comfortable working inside a PC,  take it  to a professional.

You can find the original article at infoworld.