[GLLUG] OT and out of area: How do I find a reputable data recovery service for a Win 7 m/c?

[Christopher Hunter]

On 07/05/17 16:21, John Southall IMAP via GLLUG wrote:
> Hi,
> Please forgive me, but I don't know who else to ask.
> This is for the Midlands, not the London area.
> How do we find a professional data retrieval service? What should I 
> look for?
> We need to unfreeze a Win 7 laptop, or at least extract the data files.
> We suspect that it is malware rather than a hardware problem.
>
> John
>
>

I usually use Puppy Linux or another small distribution from a USB stick 
to recover data in circumstances like that.  There are other data 
recovery software options, too, like "Universal Boot Disk" which 
includes a whole suite of useful tools.  You might need to access the 
laptop's BIOS to alter the Boot Order - to make it boot from the USB 
stick rather than from the internal hard drive (that isn't working anyway).

There are some really superb recovery tools - some designed to restore 
.JPG files, others to recover text files and so on.  A little Google 
research for Linux tools should be rewarding!

Chris