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    auto restart garbage

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by dorado29, May 14, 2008.

  1. dorado29

    dorado29 Notebook Guru

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    my sister has been working on a huge essay for the past couple hours. she, of course, didn't have it saved. windows xp did the ghey auto update where the timer counts down from about 5 minutes then it installs updates and restarts. is there any way to recover this file?
     
    dorado29, May 14, 2008
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  2. gengerald

    gengerald Technofile Extraordinaire

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    You can try to go through the start menu to office xx then document recovery. If you don't see that, just load up word and see if it says anything about an autosave, if not, it is gone. Sorry to say, it will not be recoverable if it wasn't saved.
     
    gengerald, May 14, 2008
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  3. Gintoki

    Gintoki Notebook Prophet

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    What office application was she using?
     
    Gintoki, May 14, 2008
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  4. pixelot

    pixelot Notebook Acolyte

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    For future reference, you could turn off auto-updating. ;)

    Also, along the lines of what Calvin said, the program may have an auto-backup function. If that was not on, you could at least turn it on for future use. :cool:

    Personally, I am in the habit of hitting Ctrl+S after every character I write! :eek: :p
     
    pixelot, May 14, 2008
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  5. Gintoki

    Gintoki Notebook Prophet

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    Yeah, that's what i was implying. OpenOffice automatically saves everything open, like Firefox, in case you need to restore it later. I think MS Office 2007 also does this.
     
    Gintoki, May 14, 2008
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  6. j-dogg

    j-dogg Notebook Evangelist

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    yea office 2007 auto saves as well. i was in one of the labs at my school and the power went out, we all opened up word again to find if actually saved all of our files exactly as they were before we lost power.
     
    j-dogg, May 15, 2008
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  7. dorado29

    dorado29 Notebook Guru

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    where do you go to turn this off? haha its like the third time its happened to her. hahaha i hit ctrl+s after every sentence. its an awesome time waster haha

    it was with a pre 2007 mic word.
     
    dorado29, May 15, 2008
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  8. orev

    orev Notebook Virtuoso

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    Since this has happened more than once, I recommend:
    1. Leave auto-updates enabled: She clearly is not the type of person who will handle updating the system manually. There's nothing wrong with this, but disabling the system will cause more long-term harm than good.
    2. Make sure auto-save is enabled: Word should be auto-saving and also allow recovery. If it's not working, you should figure out how to fix that instead.
    3. Learn a life lesson: Explain to her that computers are not going away, and she needs to learn this stuff sooner rather than later. Only the real "tech" people are expected to know all of the details about a system, but saving your work is one of the absolute most basic skills anyone using a computer needs to know.

    If she still doesn't get it, then maybe the next time she loses hours of work because of the same thing, it might start to sink in.
     
    orev, May 15, 2008
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