Windows 7 A log of what has been done... difficult to explain

[Pulsebass]

Hi guys & gals,

I'm going to try my hardest to explain this but basically is there a way of find out what I have done previously or what happened when I did a particular action...

For example: a friend of mine plugged in a USB stick with some pictures in which they wanted to transfer. For some reason I cannot find these pictures anywhere including pics and they are no longer on the stick. I am guessing there must have been an "auto import" or something... then again possibly were deleted. I am sure they are somewhere but is there anyway I can find out by looking at some kind of log to show me what happened.

Another example if that If i edit a notepad document I would like to find out when it was edited and where maybe I saved it to.

Kind of like Event viewer where it shows me a log of what happened at particular times and dates on my PC.


Hope this makes sense?! lol

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi there,

Most likely if your friend's Pics are gone from the usb stick, he screwed something up or accidentally deleted. Also, if that usb stick is older than about 3 years old, it could be faulty. Easiest way to check this, is insert it into another computer or laptop where usb sticks are known to work ok. If you see nothing on the device in Windows explorer, or it asks you to format the stick before you can use it--that stick has failed and must be replaced!! Takes 5 min. or less.

Regarding other programs that do editing, some have logs, some do not. Microsoft embedded Apps such as NOTEPAD & WORDPAD are built into the Windows OS, and you can use various Windows utilities to see detailed file information about when the file was last edited (time/date stamp), and other information such as Author information, file flags, sharing, etc. Windows explorer is the tool you want to learn how to use. I use to teach an entire class on just how to use this marvelous utility! There are also many 3rd party free tools that can help you locate files, file information, and such like Agent Ransack.

There are a number of sites that demonstrate how to use Windows explorer online, and you can just Google them. If you're more of a learn from a book guy, try Windows for Dummies for whatever Windows version you are running; i.e. Windows7. The books are paperback and are available at major bookstores such as B.Dalton, and Amazon for $15-$20 US.

Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>