This is way off topic but you guys seem to know just about everything. Due to a hard drive going south, I am left with a copy of my dissertation in a corupt word file. Does anyone know a way to get this back? I have tried some of the WordFix type programs and they seem to do OK but OK seems like too little for the prices that they want. Does anyone know another way to fix this? Anyone actually have the full recovery software? Any help would be VERY greatly appreciated.

-GT

Might try doing a through scandisk, I have had problems with files on floppies that that has fixed. Worth a shot at least!

What version of Word is the file in. A lot of times a newer version will fix it. I have Word XP, if you want me to try to fix it send me an email to sliebert@lslfire.com

check your mail

THank you guys so much for your help. The file is in Word 2000. I ended up running a checkdisk on the data and that helped somewhat. I also reset the archive bit to give it an acceptable file size designation. After that, I was able to move a copy of the file to my disk.

One of my RA's has taken the file through the Word 97 (go figure!) recovery agent and has about 95% of the text recovered. The graphics and such are all gone. However, the data files for those are available and can be inserted again. It is better than starting over!

The hard disk that went south has been sent to a data recovery facility that we have used in the past. They believe that they can get it all back.

Lesson learned...if your life depends on a document, keep multiple copies in multiple formats in multiple locations.

Again, thank you all so much for your help!

-GT