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Using the Undelete Command in Windows 98/95, DOS

Early Windows users, as well as DOS users have a really great undelete tool built in to their systems. A lot of computer users are still running Windows 98, or below. While Windows XP has been on the market for more than three years now, some people have been hard pressed to make the upgrade, while others have found themselves completely happy with their Windows 98 setup.

Undelete is not available on Windows XP systems; only DOS and Windows 95-ME.

A really cool program that was in previous versions of Windows, as well as certain versions of MS-DOS is not available in Windows XP. The tool, Undelete is a DOS command prompt program that allows users to literally undelete the files that they had previously deleted.

The major limitation of the software is the fact that is can only recover files if no new files or changes have been made. So, basically the undelete command will allow you to recover files if you accidentally delete them, but it will not be able to recover files that you deleted a week ago.

Users should be experienced, as the undelete utility does not have a graphical user interface, and relies on text commands.

Undelete isn't a flashy program. There are no graphics, and the program is not very user friendly. To start the program, you'll need to activate a DOS prompt in your Windows operating system.

To do this, click the start button and select "Run". Type in "command" and press enter. A black box with white text will soon be visible. This is the DOS prompt, and you will soon be able to use 'Undelete' to undelete your files.

In order to use Undelete properly, you will have to learn the options for the program. As mentioned before, Undelete is a text based program, and does not have any spectacular user interface.

Undelete offers the user several different options to help recover your deleted files.

To gain access to the commands of Undelete, type in "Undelete /? " at the DOS prompt, and press the enter key. The following text will be displayed on your screen;

/all - Automatically recovers all of the files you specify.

/list - All available files are listed (but files are not recovered).

/DOS Restricts recovery to those files that meet the file specifications (filespec) in the disk directory table.

/DT - Restricts recovery to those files found in the Delete Tracking File.

/DS - Restricts recovery to those files found in the SENTRY directory.

/load - Loads the Undelete memory-resident program into memory using information defined in the UNDELETE.INI file.

/unload - Unloads the memory-resident portion of the Undelete program from memory, turning off the capability to restore deleted files.

/purged[d] - Deletes the contents of the SENTRY directory.

/status - Displays the type of delete protection in effect for each drive.

/S[d] - Enables the Delete Sentry level of protection and loads the memory-resident portion of the UNDELETE program.

/Tdrive[-entries] - Enables the Delete Tracker level of protection and loads the memory-resident portion of the UNDELETE program. The optional entries parameter specifies the maximum number of entries in the deletion-tracking file (PCTRACKR.DEL). It must be a value in the range 1 through 999 with the default value determined by the type of disk being tracked.

After you have read through 'Undelete' program options, you will need to goto the specific directory of where you wish to undelete the files. Below is an example;

C:\> cd Downloads <- cd "change directory"

C:\Downloads\>

Once you are in the appropriate directory, rerun the 'Undelete' program, only this time fill in the correct options. For example, if you wanted to restore all files in the directory, you would use the '/all' command. Below is an example;

C:\Downloads> undelete /all

The above command will allow the undelete software to safely recover your deleted files.

Now that you have an understanding of how the undelete software works on your operating system, the next time you find yourself worried about deleted files you can simply remember what you learned about the undelete command.