i have read the other forums about this, with no luck
what i need is to be able to download then burn a live cd
which i can then run on any ntfs hard drive to restore files that
have been deleted through the already installed windows..

so just to be clear i want to recover windows files that i have deleted in windows, by simply shutting down inserting a disk, then somehow recovering these files. rebooting then they should be back...
i have heard of this being done, but i cant find anything...

any input would be greatly appreciated thanks...

I'm not sure this will help you at all, but I used "testdisk" to recover two (Linux) partitions on a harddisk. To my knowledge testdisk is part of many Linux live CD's. It's also available for Windows, so maybe it can recover your ntfs-based files as well. If your drive is not only formatted, but there is data written to it as well, then you may be in trouble and it's maybe not possible to recover anything anymore.

well that was a fast response thanks...
now before i experament with this i just want to clear up
do you know if this will allow me to recover say a notpad file to my windows desktop from the live cd????

Live CD list, forensics, security, rescue..

http://www.livecdlist.com/

I recently used knoppix and testdisk to recover files off a 500gb hard drive.

Download Knoppix, burn to CD. At the boot prompt type "knoppix 3". It will log you in as root.

Find a tutorial on testdisk before continuing.

Do an fdisk -l to see your hard drive(s) and the tutorial should tell you the rest.

AFAIK you don't want testdisk but photorec (or foremost) for carving ops. I recommend HELIX. And please don't even think of trying to recover to the same partition you deleted files from. There's no such thing as "in place carving" with that kind of toolkit.

so everything im reading is help to recover lost partitions or make non-booting disks bootable again, i want to restore 1 (ONE file) back to my still fully operational windows desktop... there are no problems with anything in the OS other than one file....

You could try this little tutorial

awesome you guys are great i got the answer i needed
i'm going to download Ubuntu live with Testdisk.
Testdisk has a PhotoRec command which appearntly can
recover individual files....

thanks a ton guys....

I have had success with The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows (UNCD4Win) wiich you can get from http://www.ubcd4win.com/

It is made for wisdows users and looks & feels like doze!

French berg
Ah!!! great if you got your files recovered otherwise recently i encountered with a tool Stellar Phoenix Linux Data Recovery which works on windows platform which can recover your files ..try the free demo version might be helpful

Does that "Free Demo Version" of Stellar Phoenix actually recover anything? Or does it just tell you what it *might* recover after you pay for the full version?
The latter was my experience with Stellar Phoenix products back a few years ago when I last used Windows- the demo version was useless. Has it changed?

Sasha

GrapefruiTgirl......Definitely it will show you the recoverable files which actually will be recovered by the software...and You talk about the Stellar Phoenix Windows that is an awesome product i had an experience with that software as well...rite now you can check the demo version which is quite working and shows you the recoverable files on preview then you can Resume the Recovery process in full version it will save your lots of time...Just give a shot and see the difference..

Right, so just to clarify for other people reading this:

Stellar Phoenix DEMO version will show you what it might recover, but won't actually recover anything. Then if you like what you see, you can pay for the FULL version (which actually works), and hopefully recover your files.

... for $79 (€62) and up. And that's for Windows only. Mac version is more expensive, Linux version n.a. (but who cares about Linux... Oh, is this a Linux forum? ;-))