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Pandora Recovery
Rated 5/5 at Softpedia, 4.5/5 at CNET and Best Data Recovery Software 2012 at http://data-recovery-software.findthebest.com/l/19/Pandora-Recovery

I have used Recuva data recovery software, it is simple awesome. It recovers large amount of deleted data.

Pandora Recovery is of the major players in recovery utilities. It offers you five major modules that recovers your lost, deleted and corrupted files. It recognizes FAT16/32 and NTFS that recovers formatted files also.

Pandora Recovery
Runs as a stand-alone program on a user's computer
Pros:
Easy to use Pandora Recovery Wizard and step-by-step guide
Cons:
Searching for significant deleted file from the long roll of detected files.
Download page: http://www.pandorarecovery.com/download

Just tried to recover encrypted 25kb *.pdf file that I didn't remember the password for. Recuva found it but couldn't recover it.

Does anyone provide a program that can be run from a bootable CD.
I have just deleted a folder that I use to collect all my downloads (few months of downloading).
I did not have one of your reviewed programs pre-installed, and I would have to have a gun held to my head to install one now (as you correctly warn against).
I don't know if there are technical limitations preventing what I am looking for (bootable CD). If there are not, then Surely (Airplane) that would be the way to go ?

Rob
PS I normally do the hold shift key down trick, to delete stuff that I am positive that I don't need. I virtually never use the Recycle bin.
I got caught out this time, when I had highlighted 4 files on the right side of my File Manager. Actually I had dragged those 4 files to another partition, intending to move them. Windows smiles at you, and copies them, so they remained in my Downloads folder, and were still highlighted. So idiot Crombie comes back to the still highlighted 4 files and does his Shift Delete trick. The File Manager notices that the Folder name on the left is also highlighted, and proceeds to delete months of data. If I were an Analyst (I was), I would design such programs to notice the possible confusion (Folder highlighted on the left, and multiple files highlighted on the right), and I would just delete the files highlighted on the right, NOT EVERY FILE in the flippin folder.
Note to myself - Pry the Shift keys from my keyboard, to prevent me ever avoiding the Recycle Bin again.

Thanks for quick response.
My PCs are 2004'ish, as is the one in question.
I have never had much luck getting them to boot from USB drives, but I will give it a go.
Thanks,
Rob
PS It is not this PC. The main one is turned off, to avoid overwriting any data.

I am a bit (actually a lot) of 'an old woman' (aka nervous/careful).
I do not want to boot into that drive, until I have recovered the Folder (or it's contents).
I am afear'd that the act of booting Windows (and the programs that auto start) could overwrite some of my deleted files.
I am surprised that there is not more demand for what I am attempting. Mind you I am surprised in many areas relating to Windows software, that people are not as careful as this 'old woman'.

Good news, I believe.
I have been Googling for the last couple of hours, searching for a bootable CD.
UBCD4Win has Recuva on it.
I am old, so my memory is rs, and I don't remember being brave enough to build it (has to be done using your own Windows XP). But I dug through my pile of CDs and there it is. The portable version of Recuva on it is 1.37.0.488
I will create a folder on this PC, and do a similar mass deletion. Then I will boot into the CD, and do a wee practice run.

because Minitool data recovery got Gizmo's Freeware award as the best product in its class, so i downloaded it and it is really good as Gizmo said. and they have bootable CD, too. you can go to their official site for more information.

For a different kind of stitching, you might want to include Microsoft's GroupShot. This allows you to stitch together the best portrait from a series of similar portrait shots.

Hugin, is a good Open scource stitch program. It is however a very difficult program for most to get to grips with. It does have a few WYSIWYG aspects to it, but much of the information it requires needs a lot of knowledge more than the average user would possibly know. I do use it on odd occasions. But, then I sometimes get my lens info all up the creek.

Tony

Gosh, it looked so promising!

I installed ICE and proceeded to test it right away with four 10mpx uncompressed TIFs. I know that's a bit demanding but modern stitching programs should handle it with no problems.

Well, after loading the pics it read 'solving...' and was like that for so long I thought my PC had hanged, until I clicked on cancel and the process was stopped. I tried again and had the same result. I thought it could be because of the number of photos or their size, so I tried just two 3mpx JPGs. The same thing again. At my fourth attempt I happened to click on the cube in the toolbar while the operation was still displaying the 'solving' message and... at last! The thing isn't obvious at all, if that's the way it's intended to work. Probably it isn't.

Then I was able to go through the functions and I really understand why you're so enthusiastic about it, Tony. Really nice capabilities, though I miss a color matching option. However, that's not much to complain about in a free program.

But... something went wrong. I clicked on the 'exit' button and the program closed after prompting to save the project. A minute later I tried to open it again and the typical 'ICE has found a problem and must be closed...' appeared on screen. And that was so for as many times as I tried. I thought I'd better reinstall it and went to the program folder just to find there's no uninstaller.

I'll try overwriting the old folder, but that'll be tomorrow. We'll see.

These issues might be specific to my setup, but they shouldn't be there. Yes, I know it's a beta, but I don't know whether to think Microsoft are again neglecting basic aspects or they are unaware of them. Anyway, I think it's best if I report the bugs. Hopefully they'll fix them.

Marc

What the heck is MS doing in the visual design area ?!? If they are creating a market beyond Adobe they have my support...

WOT addon for Firefox tells me that Panorama Perfect lite site is a dangerous one for reliability and privacy. That may or may not be the case but use precaution. Based on comments on Firefox web site, reliability problems may be due to fact WOT does not like some sites which are actually ok.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=wot

October 8. I just downloaded and installed it. No problem.

Sorry Anonymous have been away and am catching up. WOT is not always right, so common sense has to prevail here I am afraid. I have loaded it several tomes on a few computers and it is fine. Hope that helps

Tony

Glad to see you had no problem

Tony

Actually I had nothing to do with the GroupShot edit but I will have a look at it later and see what MS are doing with it.

Tony

Ok, for those who could not load this up onto their computers I suggest you try again. They have another update that they loaded on the 17th Oct. Worth downloading again even if you have it on your computer for the update

Tony

Thats great to hear. I have had nothing but success with this.

For what it's worth, I just generated a a couple of panoramas from the same images (made by rotating the camera in a slightly haphazard fashion :-) using ICE and Autostich by way of comparison.
The results from Autostich were far superior (ie. much more natural looking) in both cases.

I vote for hugin !

I needed to join 20+ images from a large map that I scanned in. I used Autostich, Hugin, and Microsoft ICE. ICE was the best out of the three. Autostich transition between all of the images was ok, but you could clearly see the over lap. To be fair to Hugin, I only spent about 30 minutes trying to figure it out, and it seems like a very powerful program, but I could only match the quality of Autostich. Microsoft ICE stiched the images almost perfectly, and you can't tell where the transition is. Although, ICE has more limited options, it worked the best.

I have been seeking a good simple panorama stitch ap for a while now. I tried the Microsoft ICE link on this article but could not bring the page up. Perhaps the link is bad? Let me know if the link or my computer is the problem.

I have a Canon camera and have been using Canon Photostitch. On wayyy too many pix it did a lousy job joining and blending; the stitch seam was obvious and straight lines often looked like bent or fractured bones.

Anywayyy...I just did a Google search for a decent freeware/shareware photo stitcher with good enough quality to use for my real estate marketing media needs. In my search I luckily happened upon the Pixtra site. Blind luck led me to it and blind luck led me to choose to download Pixtra PanoStitcher 1.6.

WOWWW is all I can say! This one WORKS! And using the blend button has created perfect blends from formerly unusable picture pairs I tried to join with Canon PhotoStitch. And the create perspective option turns the curvilinear perspective to perfect straight perspective photos. And it also blends uneven lighting very well.

I would urge folks here to try it as I had tried several others before and decided to give my search for a usable program one last try.

The shareware version is not in any way disabled that I can see but you are limited to joing just two shots without watermarks being placed on the result. But this is fine for my needs for the most part. Rarely do I need to join three or more shots. The vast majority of my pix are simple two photo joins to get a wide angle shot in close quarters. It does a great job on multi-shot joins and has lots of extras and editing options.

I will keep on using it and if it continues to work as well as it has for me today, I WILL buy it! I will be intersted to read what others here think about it.

Here is the URL to the Pixtra site: http://www.pixtra.com/Downloads/Download.htm

Good luck!

DJMK

Hugin is for professionals. It has a learning curve, but once you get how it works, it's the most complete and powerful option out there. It'as also fast and its quality is unsurpassed. You can even blend HDRI's (high dynamic range images) with it, and have a myriad of projection options.

Quick note:
I get this with programs from time to time (Firefox especially). You get the error because part of the program is still running in the background even though you can not see it. Ctrl-Alt-Del to your task manger and end the program from there. You should then be able to run it again. I have also found sometimes that after you do this the problem goes away.

Philip

Wow, I tried Microsoft ICE by throwing panoramic images at it that I took just by pivoting my body and it stitched them together without zero input from me. It did great job too!

Hi br1anstorm, you will find that most of the MS software is supported .Net Framework. Its unfortunate that its a large download, but its the only way this is supported for it to work. It is an excellent stitcher, I used it today and it was just amazing how well it worked

Fantastic that ICE. Don't even have to determine which photo goes on the right or left. Can't even tell where it was stitched.

Can't find the post now but someone back in '08 wondered what the catch was from MS. No ads at all. Only catch, you have to allow them to run Windows Genuine Advantage. As far as needing .NET framwork 2.0, it's worth it. There are new programs other than MS that require it.

A bit of the subject of this section, but I also highly recommend MS PhotoStory for making a slide show with music, titles and much more.

Access to MS's research server is a bit flaky - there's muttering about turning cookies off etc - but this ftp link works if you'd rather download from an official Microsoft server :

ftp[DOT]research[DOT]microsoft.com/downloads/730cd6bb-6450-4e66-8101-a94e71cb0779/SetupICE_x86_1.2.msi

Just as a warning, if you need to download something rather than rely on the web installer that you're first offered for the Live Gallery, it comes to 134MB!! Seems a lot if you just want a panorama tool - presumably it uses the ICE technology?

I'd second the Canon Photostitch, I don't know how it compares with other things but it works and it is easy to use.

The automated wizard is surely a good starting point. At least for the usual situations, but if you are not satisfied with the result you could tweak here and there and get even better results.
Thats the great plus with hugin, but to know what and where to tweak, thats the learning curve. I prefer it, because using ubuntu, there is no other obvious choice.

Ok, I had never thought of looking there. I am so focused elsewhere that it hadn't occurred to me to look there. I will investigate

Having used Autostitch and ICE on all my panoramas* (to compare results between the two), I have found:

ICE is superficially nicer in almost every way; the UI is better, there are more options, more features.
However, Autostitch almost universally gives far superior, more naturalistic results.

ICE seems to be more a simplistic, giving panoramas that look like multiple photos pasted together, minimising boarders but often giving a deeply unnatural perspective and visible seams.

Autostich seems to do the best job possible with the source photos, and through more refined and extensive warping gives smoother seams and a much more uniform perspective, looking more like a single photo taken with a wide angle lens than a hodgepodge of individual images.

I'm almost always amazed how much better one guys project is than Microsoft's effort.

*My panoramas generally consist of relatively haphazard hand-held photos, while trying to stay a level as possible and ensuring decent overlaps and contrast.

I found HUGIN a very difficult program to master, therefore concluded it was not one to be recommended. Keep to MS ICE you won't go wrong

Another panoramic stitcher worth trying is buried in the Zoner Photo Studio (see its listing under Gizmo's "Best Free Digital Image Viewer). Click on the "Manager" tab in the upper right of the screen, then "Publish", then "Panorama". It is straightforward to use and produces good results - even when other stitchers failed. Wasn't finding it obvious?

Seriously, hugin is designed for professional users. Photosynth is essential to beginners, like me.

http://www.photosynth.net/

[Moderator's Note : Mention and link of commercial software removed]

Thanks for the kind words :)

Just recently, I compared the two on one job. Each panorama was slightly different, and while Photo Gallery produced perhaps a more pleasing composite, ICE was superior on image quality. This would make me incline towards the latter, overall.

Any home still/spirit making software?

An excellent article.

I'll look into this one.
Thanks for the note.
BruGuy

None that I know of right now.

Not too bad!

Make Your Own Beer

I've been using this brewing web site for years:

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

It's an excellent recipe editor and there are also a lot of great recipes (for ideas) posted in the “Recipes” section. Also, check out the Home page as there are links to a couple useful brewing calculators.

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

This one does the job for homebrewers

I like Brewgr.com. A online homebrew recipe calculator that is free and very simple to use. I love the way I can compare my recipe to related BJCP styles. It also allows users to create a homebrew session and store mash, fermentation, conditioning, and tasting data.

Works nicely but take a look at your CPU
Mine reacts at a very annoying way. The mouse curser keeps changing to the "loading curser". The program raises my CPU with approx. 4% every 5 sec.

I use Vista home edition, but I think to remember the same problem on my XP computer when installing the program at it a couple of years ago.

Btw. sorry for my bad english.. I'm danish ;P

doesn't work with firefox 3 yet.

Another way to speed up the internet is to use a service like http://www.opendns.com/. You point your DNS to them, create a free account, decide what you want to filter out, and voila! You can surf the internet faster, depending on what you have filtered out (like ads, commercial pages, porn, etc). The huge size of their DNS cache is also supposed to make website lookups faster. I think they are situated somewhere in the States, so locals over there should benefit the most.