Learning the hard way...

[Guest]

Never ever leave a story open in the taskbar of your computer if you are going to be busy elsewhere for a few minutes. Always make sure that if you do leave it that you had saved the darn thing at least once.

You see where I am going with this don't you?

While I was in the kitchen fixing lunch, the boys decided it would be fun to play on Mommy's computer. Four pages of the chapter that I am writing in the Blossoming Rose chain story are gone, never to be seen from again.

I've learned my lesson, but boy what a way for it to happen. Now I have to start all over. I hope I can remember what I had written...

CM http://cmw.dailymoviereviews.com/otn/sad/mecry.gif

 

[NoJo]

That's a big pissoff. If you use MS word, set it to autosave every 10 minutes. Get into the habit of typing Ctrl-S (= save) every few paragraphs.

Aren't you worried they'll read your erotica? Or are they too young?

 

[Guest]

Good golly, Crimson. I'm sorry you lost your work, but when I read "the boys" I immediately thought you were going to say they'd read it.

Perdita

 

[Guest]

LOL, no the boys aren't old enough to read yet. I don't leave any stories open when my oldest is home simply because she can read.

I do have it set to autosave, but it doesn't work until I actually do the first save and name the file.

I now have it set to autorecover. Maybe that will help if I forget to save and close a story and this happens again.

CM (who turns the AVs off until after the kids go to bed so they can't see the pictures either)

 

[lucky-E-leven]

Sorry about the lost work...that's a bummer.

Autosave is a lifesaver. My wonderful city does not believe in surge control, I guess, and we lose power frequently. I am always recovering documents that way and so far no complaints. Good luck!

lucky

 

[CharleyH]

Cm, looking at watch, you seem to have three days . . . . ticking away . . . lol . . . but really, similar thing happend to photographer friend of mine who had hand painted photos for a paid gig, only to let them dry on the fireplace . . . bellows seemed like a fun thing to her twins at the time!

And oh, my cat really did chew up that essay paper in U.

 

[Guest]

bellows seemed like a fun thing to her twins at the time!

Ah, see, it must be a twin thing then. I'm sure it was one of my twins that deleted the story since one of them is generally fascinated with my computer.

CM

 

[CharleyH]

LOL!

 

[kellycummings]

I have two harddrives on my computer and I keep text files, music, etc. on one of them. A few months ago the drive decided to go out on me. Totally, no recovery, nothing, gone forever, never to be heard from again. Not only did I lose all those files but also half of my storage space. I know that most of you don't care and wondering why I'm telling you this. Just thought I'd let you know that it could be a whole lot worse than losing a few chapters.
I have kids too and one of them can read and I have to be careful about leaving things open when she is around. It could be quite embarassing and difficult to explain if she were to ever read one.

 

[Guest]

I know it could have been alot worse. Colly lost her hard drive not long ago and it had several of her works in progress, not to metion other important things.

I have managed to rewrite the pages that I lost. I know it isn't word for word, but it should be close to what I had written before since I got to the same spot in the story as I was when I lost it and had the same number of pages.

You can bet this time (even though the kids are all in bed) that I have saved it... more than once, lol.


CM

 

[dececious]

ack!

have to hate it when hard work is deleted,
I dont have the problem with things getting deleted I have a problem with them being found, my computer is on all the time and there is a standing invitation to use it, but I've had my diary discovered once before, God help me if they find my lit stuff, or worse still dome of the pics I have on here!

(they being my housemates)

D

 

[Madame Manga]

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,110663,00.asp

Here's an article with some hints for protecting your personal files on a Windows machine.

MM

 

[lucky-E-leven]

http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,110663,00.asp

Here's an article with some hints for protecting your personal files on a Windows machine.

MM

good stuff MM. thanks. have been protecting each file individually and it would be nice to have them all in one place under one password.

-lucky

 

[snooper]

You can recover Word documents from the .tmp files they left behind in the various temp directories. These are cleared regularly, but if you rename the right one as .doc your work is there! To find the right one it must be:
a) showing a size greater than 0,
b) showing the right date and time last accessed,
c) have a name like ~WRL0406.tmp.

 

[Guest]

I looked for those snooper but didn't see the right one. It doesn't matter as much now since I have it rewritten (thought it would be neat to compare the two).

CM

 

[Ravishing]

I've lost things before, so I know how it feels.

And to the one that brought up the way to password protect files, thats definately something I'm going to enjoy know. Now if only I can find my files in all those scattered directories.

 

[Svenskaflicka]

If I had kids who did that to my masterpieces, I'd strangle them. À la Homer Simpson.

 

[Dirt Man]

I looked for those snooper but didn't see the right one. It doesn't matter as much now since I have it rewritten (thought it would be neat to compare the two).

CM

The trick is, to save the document right off, even before you write the first paragraph. Give the document a heading, or temporary title, and then save as. Windows updates everything every second, so even if your computer freezes, and you have to shut it off manually all you have to do is pull it from documents, or go to your Explorer file and find the Temp file in Windows that is right above your Temp Internet file. When you finish the work, and have saved it one last time then you can rename the file if you wish later on.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man

 

[Guest]

I will be doing that from now on. I have word set up to save backups of my stories as well.

CM