Hello everyone!

I screwed up a bit when installing Windows 8 and forgot to backup some files (not really important ones), but I got them back using a recovery software.
The only problem is, that they're all corrupted and broken. Is there any way to repair those files?

Well I learned my lesson.

But thanks in advance

I assume you're dual-booting and not using Windows 8 beta as your main system?
Can you use Windows' shadow copy from your other OS?
What recovery software?
What type of files?
How are they corrupted? Garbled text? fixed/broken pixels?

Get a HexEditor to view inside the file to see it has not been overwritten. If it's all zeros, or blank, then the file is done. There's no way to rejuvenate this file(s).

Free - http://download.cnet.com/HxD-Hex-Editor ... 91068.html

I got some tricks under my sleeve but you'll need to give us in-depth of what file is it that you can't seem to open due to corruptions. It's most like gotten overwritten. This is very common...

@Stu, I doubt very much that he Dual Booted his system, sounds more like he upgraded from Win 7. If it was Dual Booted, it wouldn't touch the main OS, i.e. Win 7. Just a hunch... I'm guessing he used, RECUVA, a very nice freeware, many Forensic Examiners used it...

Full us in, and we can go from there....

Hello and sorry for a slow response!

Yea Rick I used Recuva, my friend had the full version so he kindly let me to use it. And the story behind all this was that I somehow managed to screw up Windows 8 DP with dev tools installation, so I had to reformat the old Windows 8 DP in order to make it work. (I'm sure there would have been other ways to do this.) Then I just made a clean installation of Windows 8 on top of my Winodws 7, so I lost only the files that were in the older Windows 8 installation. Now I have both Windows 7 and 8 once again installed. I maybe should have thought more when doing all of this, but I just was so tired and angry at the moment.

Hope you understood the text above

And thanks for the link, Rick! The files are not blank or all zeros, just filled with random characters.

Batupata, what does the first string in the HEX Editor show? Give me a screen shot so I am better able to judge the outcome. If you reformatted it, and it's on top, like an Upgrade.... it's most likely have corrupted the files to actually open it. Again, one question that Stu and I asked was, what file extensions are they? e.g. word doctx/doc, etc.... .jpg/png, etc...

Let us know...

They're mostly .png, .jpg, .psd and .skp files, just 3D-models and stuff.

Yup, that looks corrupted... You can see the first line has nothing, it should reveal the file name... To practice, go open a working image... you can use that to compare a working file and a corrupted file.

You can easily see the sequences: 01, 02, 03, etc... OF, etc..... Ok, what is the file extension in this one that your using to use in the Hex Editor?

If you want, you can email me (PM) the file or contact me via PM and I can take a look at the file itself. I don't know if it contain anything personal.... but that's up to you...