Windows Notepad: W.T.F.?

Question

I have a Notepad file that I've been using to keep all sorts of tidbits related to my novel. And I just now opened it up and blanched. Most of it has been reduced to gibberish like this:

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WHAT? Holy ******* ****. Why did it do this, and is there any possible way I can fix it?

Well, one thing's for certain -- I'm never using it again, no matter how quick and convenient it is. **** you, Notepad.

Answer 1

Notepad didn't screw you.Windows Screwed you.I don't see any point in Windows' Disk Check.It doesn't solve anything just corrupts the good files.Hopefully I got Ubuntu and got rid of all this pain windows gave me.

you can get it at http://ubuntu.com

Answer 2

Basically the file has become corrupted probably because of something else overwrite the space on the disk where the file is located. This is typically caused by pointer errors in the drive tables.



It has nothing to do with notepad, but rather the overall health of your machine.



I would do the following:



1) Do a Start | Run, and type chkdsk /f, click ok. Run a disk check with error correction to cleanup any problems that can cause this.



2) Establish a backup regime - no matter what tool you use this type of problem can occur. You need to be able to copy important data files to something outside of your primary drive. Could be a thumb drive, could be CDRW, could be a USB drive. Never depend on a single location for anything important to you.



I actually store all my stuff in 3 (actually 4) locations. My working drive on my computer, a portable USB drive for stuff I want to port to and from the office and network accessible storage device. The latter is a two 1 TB drive system where the two drives mirror each other - if one fails, the other is a backup for me.



This will not resolve your immediate problem but hopefully

Answer 3

Windows notepad is crap, use an alternetive text editor like NoteTab Light or any other (with good reputation), after installing a new text editor try to open your file, that may work. The reason why that happened may not be related to Notepad, it could be an error in your hard drive or RAM so always keep copies of any important document, also to try to recover your file you can search for temporary files or files you didn't had before on your "system drive" (like C:\) and open them with a text editor to see if they contain pieces of your file.



Finally after doing what I said before search for errors on your drive doing this-> http://www.w7forums.com/use-chkdsk-check-disk-t448.html