Nasty File Overwrite

[Evan Weiner]

Thurs & Fri I was playing online newspaper Soduko & having keyboard response
problems. So I would open Word & key in 12121. Saving this doesn’t make
sense. Friday evening, my wife is near tears explaining that her week’s
work disappeared. I open her file and find nothing but 12121. We have
separate profiles, and it’s obvious if you’re in one or the other. We both
have admin rights. Now I recall switching users to see if the keyboard would
recover w/o restart. Maybe that’s how it happened. I probably tested the
keyboard on her side. How could it be on her document? We’ve concluded she
was not logged on when I was.

One bad guy is the keyboard going dead. Sometimes the mouse goes as well.
How do I attack that? One puny idea: next time try the extra keyboard or
mouse.
No backup - we deserve it.
Scrounging around found nothing.
Updated & ran Symantec virus scan - nothing.
Restoration.exe showed a .wkb file that wouldn’t come up.
I’ve suggested saving progressively as Name1.doc, Name2.doc, etc, but she’s
gun shy. Similarly for Word’s one-shot backup.
So much for my idea of backup with xcopy & flash memory. Now it’ll to be
Acronis + external hard drive. It’s my opinion that xcopy could have
destroyed the good stuff with the bad.

Any thoughts?

Windows XP MCE
Word 2003

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Thurs & Fri I was playing online newspaper Soduko & having keyboard
response
problems. So I would open Word & key in 12121. Saving this doesn't make
sense. Friday evening, my wife is near tears explaining that her week's
work disappeared. I open her file and find nothing but 12121. We have
separate profiles, and it's obvious if you're in one or the other. We
both
have admin rights. Now I recall switching users to see if the keyboard
would
recover w/o restart. Maybe that's how it happened. I probably tested the
keyboard on her side. How could it be on her document? We've concluded
she
was not logged on when I was.

One bad guy is the keyboard going dead. Sometimes the mouse goes as well.
How do I attack that? One puny idea: next time try the extra keyboard or
mouse.
No backup - we deserve it.
Scrounging around found nothing.
Updated & ran Symantec virus scan - nothing.
Restoration.exe showed a .wkb file that wouldn't come up.
I've suggested saving progressively as Name1.doc, Name2.doc, etc, but she's
gun shy. Similarly for Word's one-shot backup.
So much for my idea of backup with xcopy & flash memory. Now it'll to be
Acronis + external hard drive. It's my opinion that xcopy could have
destroyed the good stuff with the bad.

Any thoughts?

Windows XP MCE
Word 2003

Can't say. You pull xcopy.exe out of thin air, without saying what
you use it for and how you use it.

Whatever your final backup solution is, you must observe these
essential points:
a) You must back up to an independent medium.
b) This medium must be kept away from your PC most of the time.
c) You must do regular test restores.
d) You must alternate between at least two backup versions so
that you can fall back on the previous version in case you back
up an already corrupted file without noticing the corruption.

 

[C.Joseph S. Drayton]

Thurs & Fri I was playing online newspaper Soduko & having keyboard
response problems. So I would open Word & key in 12121. Saving this
doesn’t make sense. Friday evening, my wife is near tears
explaining that her week’s work disappeared. I open her file and
find nothing but 12121. We have separate profiles, and it’s
obvious if you’re in one or the other. We both have admin rights.
Now I recall switching users to see if the keyboard would recover w/o
restart. Maybe that’s how it happened. I probably tested the
keyboard on her side. How could it be on her document? We’ve
concluded she was not logged on when I was.

One bad guy is the keyboard going dead. Sometimes the mouse goes as
well. How do I attack that? One puny idea: next time try the extra
keyboard or mouse.
No backup - we deserve it.
Scrounging around found nothing.
Updated & ran Symantec virus scan - nothing.
Restoration.exe showed a .wkb file that wouldn’t come up.
I’ve suggested saving progressively as Name1.doc, Name2.doc, etc,
but she’s gun shy. Similarly for Word’s one-shot backup.
So much for my idea of backup with xcopy & flash memory. Now it’ll
to be Acronis + external hard drive. It’s my opinion that xcopy
could have destroyed the good stuff with the bad.

Any thoughts?

Windows XP MCE
Word 2003

Hi Evan,

If your wife is doing work on that computer than I would strongly
recommend using SyncBack (which is FreeWare), It can make automatic
backups of all of your wife's data directories or she can double-click
its icon in the SysTray and have it make a backup on the spot. I also
created a profile in it so that I can plug in a USB device and have it
send a backup to the USB device.

You can fiind SynBack at;

http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html#freeware

I am a programmer, and like that I can make working backups also. If
this FreeWare version has a profile limit, I haven't found it yet.

--

Sincerely,
C.Joseph Drayton, Ph.D. AS&T

CSD Computer Services
Web site: http://csdcs.tlerma.com/
E-mail: (e-mail address removed)