How do I get a messy .txt file working again?
How do I get a messy .txt file working again?
I had a .txt file that had lots of text in it. Suddenly, it turned into random symbols and some letters with a black background. I don't know if this is corruption or something else. I tried to fix the old version using an app and got back the one month ago, but when I opened it again, it still looks like gibberish. I tried opening it in regular notepad, Notepad++, Wordpad, and even changed the encoding without knowing how that works. Nothing worked. This is so frustrating, please help... This is what it looks like: https://imgur.com/a/oO3Ws8D
Hey, what's your favorite app or program that helped you get back to your old stuff? Did you check for bad things recently like viruses or malware? Give me more info if you can!
There was an update that made my laptop run really slow, so I turned off that update and my speed is back normal. Then I changed all of my folders to read only (just to be sure). I have two hard drives on my laptop; a video I can play on the main drive but not when copied to another one. That's why I made everything read-only just because I thought it was causing that problem. Oh, before this Notepad issue started, someone named Disk Drill scanned for missing files and it was super slow so I closed that program in Task Manager. The "app" I used for data recovery was Recuva, Recover It Wondershare, and Fonelab Data Receiver. Recuva was an old version, like a day or two before the problem started, and when I opened it, it still showed gibberish text. Recover It paid but I could preview it too; it still had gibberish text. The last one was Fonelab and it got the version from September back in time. I was happy until I opened it again and it showed the same gibberish text. Since then, I haven't done any deep virus scans so right now as I write this is still happening. Thanks for your reply
File access settings aren't how they usually work. It could mean the file is broken, the hard drive is failing, or something was damaged before. Did you recover a deleted version, or... anything else? That .txt file looks like it's locked up with encryption. Bad things like viruses or ransomware might be behind it.
I don't know exactly what folder permissions are doing, but you're right. The only thing stuck there is that specific video file. Other videos play perfectly fine. I tried running a check to fix bad sectors, but it said none were found. That "recovered" file? It's probably just an old version of the same comic notes that I keep editing from page to page over time. I never actually deleted them. So yeah, maybe that note is full of all those titles I read before, and now it has way too many of them. I'm really desperate to get them back because gibberish was messing with everything else on the drive, but when I looked at other .txt files, they were all normal as usual.
Sometimes deleting your files and trying to get them back doesn't always work well because some data gets damaged or corrupted along the way. It's actually quite normal for this to happen.