Getting overwritten file back, that is still in "recently opened"

[rayqun]

Hello, yesterday I was trying to make a logo improvement for something. Unfortunaly I didn't know how that software works, and it overwrites all of the changes once it's restarted. I still have one picture of the whole thing left in my recently opened, but I've tried it with other pictures (that's why I only have 1 left) and they open as the old standart file. I'm pretty sure that there is some way of getting back, because it is showing a little preview of what I made in a little window, so I think I could somehow recover it, but I don't know how, so that's why I am here.
Any help is appreciated, and I will provide an update once the issue is resolved, or it's made unresolvable.

[Pixey]

Hello @rayqun and welcome to the forum  

 

If you want to save a project that you are working on, you must Save As > to .pdn, then when you open it again all the changes will be there, but you MUST save it every time you make a change.  

[rayqun]

I did save it, but as I said it has been overwritten. It also still is in my recently opened, so I guess the picture is still somewhere on my computer.

[Pixey]

Then, if it is indeed saved, you should see this:

 

[otuncelli]

29 minutes ago, rayqun said:

It also still is in my recently opened, so I guess the picture is still somewhere on my computer.

 

This doesn't mean the file is available. It's just a thumbnail stored in somewhere else (usually in Windows Registry). The actual file might not be available anymore. It might be moved, deleted, corrupted etc...

[rayqun]

But if it is saved in Windows Registry it could be pulled from there, couldn't it? Also, Pixey, yes it appears there, but it is a different picture when I open the folder where it is supposed to be in. When I click on it, it opens as the picture I can see in the folder, instead of the one that is seen in the little preview window.

[Pixey]

11 minutes ago, rayqun said:

But if it is saved in Windows Registry it could be pulled from there, couldn't it?

 

Have you looked for your image in your' Pictures' folder?  It may have been saved there.

 

12 minutes ago, rayqun said:

When I click on it, it opens as the picture I can see in the folder, instead of the one that is seen in the little preview window.

 

That could be that you renamed it to something else.

[otuncelli]

36 minutes ago, rayqun said:

But if it is saved in Windows Registry it could be pulled from there, couldn't it?

 

Would that tiny preview image does it for you? Because that's how it's stored in the Registry. It's only 66x66 pixels.

 

Easier way to extract this image without dealing with Windows Registry and Base64 decoding stuff.

Take a screenshot (Print Screen) of Paint.NET while "Open Recent" menu is open and then paste it as a new image (CTRL+ALT+V).

Then you can crop the image you want from the menu.

 

This method would work nicely if the image was icon, emoji with no alpha.

Edited August 3, 2022 by otuncelli

[Rick Brewster]

The only thing stored in the registry is the file path and the thumbnail.

 

When you click on the File->Open Recent menu, the file paths are not checked to make sure they are still valid (that they still exist). This is because they could be on removable media or on a network share (or any kind of "slow" storage device, for that matter), and it could take awhile for the I/O request to timeout. Multiplied by 10, it could cause the menu to take several minutes to show up, during which the app would be hung.