Deleting a file can be an accident and can be recovered from a Recycle Bin. However, what if you have accidentally deleted a file, and now you want to recover a file that has been deleted from the recycle bin. The official Microsoft store offers a freeware application that we can use to recover any deleted files. Windows File Recovery is a command-line based application that can recover permanently deleted files, but first, you will have to install it on your device. You can go to Microsoft store and search for Windows File recovery, get and install the application.

We all delete the unnecessary files that we don’t need. However, sometimes deleting a file is a bad choice, as it is possible that we may still need the file. If you delete a file on Windows, the deleted files will be temporarily stored in the Recycle Bin. Therefore you can restore the deleted files and can also delete the files Permanently from your hard disk.

The tool will be installed as winfr.exe on your system. You can type winfr to launch the application from anywhere. The application can also recover files from an external hard drive or USB stick. However, it runs only on the latest May 2020 version 2004 of Windows. So if you haven’t updated your Windows yet, you can’t utilize the Windows File Recovery app. Though the application will be recovering deleted files, therefore it will need administrative privileges. Without administrative privileges, the application wouldn’t work properly.

How to Recover Deleted Files using Windows File Recovery

There are two basic modes in the Windows file manager, and each mode has its specific purpose. However, if you want to recover a deleted JPEG, PNG, DOCX, or a folder, then you can use default mode with a one-line command to recover.

Recover DOCX file

Type the following code mentioned below to in the command prompt and press enter on your keyboard, to recover any Microsoft office files. You can change the path to the directory where the file was. Also, you have to type the exact file name or at least the file format.

winfr C:E:/n\Users(your username)\Documents\filename.docx

Recover a JPEG or PNG

Type the following code below and hit enter in the command prompt to recover the deleted JPEG and PNG file, the file will be recovered to the recovery folder. Here, it is the E drive, but you have to type the appropriate drive. Here, you only have to mention the file format instead of the full name, and the application will recover every deleted png or jpeg files in the directory.

winfr C:E:/n\Users(your username)\Pictures\ *JPEG

winfr C:E:/n\Users(your username)\Pictures*PNG

Recovering a folder

To recover a folder using windows file recovery, you only have to mention the core drive and recovery drive then the path of the deleted folder that you want to recover. Press enter to execute the function, the folder and the contents within will be recovered in the recovery folder.

winfr C: E: /n \Users(your username)\Documents\

Recover PDF, ZIP, XLSX, etc

Besides the default mode, there are segment mode and signature mode. Segment command (/r) can be used to recover multiple different file types via one command. Signature mode recovers all the supported extension groups and similar file types. Thus, we can use both modes to recover zip files and pdf files. Type the following command to recover a PDF  file along with the DOCX file. You can remove n *.docx code if you only want to recover the PDF. However, you can also add multiple formats.

winfr C: E: /r /n *.pdf /n *.docx

To recover a ZIP file with all its corresponding file extensions, type the following command in the command prompt and press enter.

winfr C: E:\RecoveryTest /x /y:ZIP

Conclusion

To check the commands and syntax, you can simply type winter in the command prompt and press Enter on your keyboard. The command will execute all the commands that you can use for the recovery of deleted files. By using Windows file recovery, you can recover JPEG, PDF, PNG, MPEG, DOCX, MP3 & MP4, ZIP files, and much more. To know how to recover files using Windows File Recovery, follow the steps mentioned below.

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