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Lost Images and Sounds, Damaged Office Files, Lost Passwords

Find lost images and sounds: The recovery programs I described above can find deleted photos (and other lost data) on most of the memory cards used in digital cameras, but you'll have a better chance of success if you use a program designed specifically to recover photo files. Art Plus's Digital Photo Recovery and PC Inspector's Smart Recovery are free utilities that do a good job on JPEG, TIFF, and RAW files. For a more complete recovery tool, try MediaRecover 4.0, a $30 package.

Repair Word and Excel files: If a Word or Excel file is garbled or won't open at all, use Microsoft's built-in file-repair tools: Click File, Open, and locate and select the damaged file. Then click the arrow on the right side of the Open button and select Open and Repair from the drop-down menu.

Repair your Word or Excel installation: When Word or Excel starts to behave badly, it's tempting to uninstall and reinstall the program. But running Microsoft's repair utility may be a quicker and simpler solution: Open Control Panel and select Add or Remove Programs in XP, or Uninstall a program in Vista (in Control Panel's Classic view, double-click Programs and Features). Find the entry for Word, Excel, or Microsoft Office, and in XP click the Change button, select either Reinstall or Repair, and follow the prompts. In Vista, click Repair at the top of the window, and step through the wizard.

Recover a lost password: It's not just a symptom of old age: Whether due to infrequent use or an abundance of protected accounts, anybody can forget a password. These tips will help you overcome your memory lapse.

Setting a security password in your PC's BIOS is a great way to keep people off your PC: Until the user enters the password, your PC won't even start. You can reset a BIOS password on most motherboards by resetting a small electrical switch--or "jumper"--on your motherboard. Check your motherboard's manual or the vendor's Web site for instructions on how to identify and reset the jumper.

It's embarrassingly easy to bypass the Windows XP log-on password: Simply restart your PC and press the F8 key just before Windows starts. At the Advanced Options menu, select the first option: Safe Mode. XP will boot into Safe Mode and display a log-on screen with icons for already-established user names, as well as an icon for Administrator. Log onto the Administrator account--leaving the password blank unless you've previously assigned a password for the account--and once in Windows, open the Control Panel and select User Accounts. Now you can reset the passwords for any account.

Microsoft finally realized what a tremendous security breach this was, so Vista hides and disables its built-in Administrator account, and you can't use it to bypass the OS's log-in.

Password recovery programs are available for Word, Excel, Outlook, compressed, and almost every other commonly used file type that can be password-protected. For example, Elcomsoft's $49 Advanced Office Password Recovery is easier to use than most free password recovery programs. You can recover a password from an Outlook, Eudora, or other e-mail program by using Nirsoft's free Mail Pass View. Note that "free" data recovery services are sometimes fronts for data thieves, so stick with programs from reliable sources, such as our own Downloads site.