Spent part of my CET night in trying to register the programme. The PC crashed each time I clicked on the Active@ Undelete screen, without - seemingly - completing its installation. (And, yes, even with Anti-Virus & Firewall turned of.)

Having succesfully re-installed it in Safe Mode, it now just triggers the infamous Windows error/alert that "it has stopped working," – but, at least, my laptop no longer crashes at that point.

Running all procedures as admin on a 64-bit Windows 10.

According to the text accompanying the GOTD offer of Active@ Undelete, which offers Active@ Boot Disk, the latter may now be purchased with a 40% discount.

I want to purchase Boot Disk, to replace my present version 6.5.0 (Data Studio). Because for years I have used Boot Disk as the backbone of an extensive emergency disk of my own, incorporating a very large number of additional 32-bit programs (most of them not originally portable, but made portable by me), I want to buy the last 32-bit version, i.e. version 9.4.

You enabled me to download a demo version of 9.4, but when I try to purchase, only version 10.5 is offered.

I would like to buy:
-- Active@ Data Studio, version 9.4, Windows and DOS
-- Personal License
-- with the 40% GOTD discount

If you are not offering Active@ Data Studio with that discount, alternatively I would like to buy:
-- Active@ Boot Disk, version 9.4, Windows and DOS
-- Personal License
-- with the 40% GOTD discount

Please inform me as to how to proceed.

William W. Geertsema
w.w.geertsema@planet.nl

(Not a lot of time to evaluate, so... One needs to understand the terminology to judge what is or is not given here & whether the limitations are material... Supposedly there is a Free version...?)

Given the limitations, to me, this seems like a teaser.
It is barely 1 step ahead of the "Free" version.

http://www.active-undelete.com/features.htm

Standard edition restrictions:

Unable to detect and recover files by their signatures;
Disabled restore deleted partition feature;
Disabled advanced Disk Editor tool for raw disk exploring and editing;
Disabled Partition Manager - robust feature to create, modify and resize disk partitions (volumes);
Disabled create virtual RAID assembly feature;
Disabled Recovery Wizards - self-guided tools for easy data recover;
Disabled Disk Images - comprehensive feature to create and use disk images;
Disabled File Organizer;
Scan results can only be saved;

From years ago, different software, seems particular scans were very time consuming, & I was able save "runs" & return to them. If something like that is not available here, that would be a great detriment.

----

You need to provide an email to them, they reply to that, you follow that link, then are provided the registration.

Their end didn't like the first two emails I used, but took the third, with their reply promptly following. Clicking the link in their reply takes you to a page with the registration data.

Easy enough.

Then you enter that registration data in the program.

Done.

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Disabled parts of the program are not "grayed" out in the UI, leading to unnecessary clicks on "features" not available to you.

------------

From what I recall, Active has been around for a long time, & this should be a decent program, so don't let my somewhat negative sounding comments deter you. This should be worthwhile to hold onto, I will. (And I'll explore it further, when I get some time.)

When the program starts, part of the program is below the top of the task bar (it should use the user's available display area).

When I click on any of the "Getting Started" choices, the program displays an error:
The exception unknown software exception (0xc0000417) occurred in the application at location 0x7855716d.

Clicking on OK closes the program.

Restarting, I find I can click on any of the left menu items under the "Getting Started" tab, such as "File Recovery Wizards" or "Support" but if I make a choice, the program displays the same error (includes the Support | Report a bug option). Therefore, I cannot enter the registration area due to the crash. The program also displays the same error if I click on the Close button.

I have tried un-clicking the "Show this view on startup" to get past the screen the next time I start it, but it shows up the next time, still clicked to show at startup.

How can I get the program to be operational long enough to get started testing it out?

Win 10 x64. It downloaded and installed without a problem. The Key was available in my inbox before it finished downloading. This version gives me a chance to experiment (play with it), and get used to it. I expect to get an offer to upgrade at a discounted price soon, because they have my email now.

Unable to register. First attempt never received email. Second website nonexistent. Will have to uninstall.

I'll say it right off.. first commenter (Dr. John.. or something like that) this version is not promoted as being the PRO edition here.. it's Standard 11. essentially, what we got.

It installed quickly and easily on Windows 10 - 64bit.
Ran it easily without too many hoops to go through.. although, I don't really like having to subscribe to a list to get the license (but, I'll get rid of that in a bit). Scanned quickly and found a partition that was not lettered or accessible though Windows explorer. Found to be the system recovery partition which was packed full of files and recovery executables.
In checking through Disk Management MMC I could see the partition, but no file system noted and was listed as empty - would be a serious mistake to try and manage that partition through windows...
I checked with some files I had deleted completely a few days ago, and they were found and restored without issue. nice!
Essentially, found it works well, there is an option for virtual raid array, which I will explore more, but at this point, I can tell it's a nice little program which does what it says.

I would agree, I'd like to see it actively work with portable devices (phones) better and, to be honest, it's almost a given that this kind of software is pretty much required to run on usb or memory card given that trying to recover a disk on a portable device (surface) would be almost impossible without it.

This Standard edition does not have the ability to boot from an unbootable crashed system. i.e. there is not boot disk.
This Standard edition cannot recover a broken boot record in your hard disk.

Will skip this giveaway since I have Acronis that is a full bare metal backup.

Got the email finally, from a totally different email address then the Yahoo! one. After looking the software over carefully, I do have a PhD in Computer Systems Information, I clicked over to their web site,,,had they given us their total package it would have been great...what it is is a seriously disabled version of their software...I would be surprised if you could effectively perform any kind of recovery other then a software level recovery, i.e., replacing the special character on the deleted file with an actual character the systems will display the file...other then that, good luck. I dislike deception. We did not receive the Professional Version as noted in its description. We got the lowest package on a totem of three...it is coming off of my computer. Even Windows will accomplish what this software can do.

First and foremost it would be helpful if you mentioned that Antivirus & Anti-Malware software needs to be disabled in order to get this thing to install. Also, even though it is activated and registered it doesn't seem to work. The program will not let me select files, and partitions to work with. However I will keep trying to hold my nose in the correct position while clicking on various things until something works. This software isn't terribly intuitive.

OK, so perhaps someone would be so kind as to tell me how to register -pretty-please-with sugar-on top. I have tried following written directions / instructions... and is it only ME having problems???

Generally programs of this type are expensive and I wondered what you would get such a relatively cheap program.

Once installed as registered did a scan of a flash drive; it took a reasonable amount of time as you would expect.
It presented the results in a somewhat busy interface with plenty of options which included filters.

This type of program is not easy to evaluate quickly, but from what I can see it looks like a really decent program at an equally decent price.
A program I'll be happy to keep.

Full disclosure- I am their customer
Ok, here is my review:

Short version:

Download away and don’t look back!

Long Version:
Personally, I consider myself a techy who basically knows his stuff. However, around 6 months ago I went on a business trip to one server company where I was accidentally introduced to Data Studio which was one the main tools they used for system maintenance.
At first, I didn’t give much to it, but later when I spoke with a cup of coffee with their technicians, I was very much amazed at what the tool does. I am not a professional PC technician; I fix computers once in awhile to my neighbors and relatives, but I thought that I was aware (more or less) about the current offer of data utilities. It appears that “less” was way bigger than I initially thought.
For those who don’t know, Data Studio is LSoft’s premium product which you can install on your PC and on your USB and basically recover, delete, backup data, manage partitions, etc.
Since being cheap, I didn’t buy Data Studio (it's around $150) but after some evaluation (I downloaded their Demo) I eventually bought Undelete Ultimate (got it on sale, 50% off for just $40). Mostly because I did not see how I could use their other stuff and as I said, I‘m cheap.
I am safe to say that it was one of the better decisions in the past six months! The amount of content they packed into that app is ridiculous! From ordinary data recovery, raid recovery, fixing boot sectors, creation of disk images, extraction of files from disk images, file organizer, file preview and even Partition Manager. From the moment you install and run Undelete and see its UI, you know that it was made by someone who knows what he’s doing. Although software being packed with just about everything you can think of, Interface is very intuitive, and you always know what you are doing. Apart from fixing some smaller issues I actually recovered neighbor’s raid 0 when it crashed and got $50 for it. Thank you LSoft!

But, is Undelete the holy cow of data recovery and the best thing that happened to us since Jesus Christ?
No, it is not, there are some cons that I think that they should me mentioned:
- It doesn’t recover data on mobile devices (in a way it does, but you have to remove your SD card from the phone, which as real drag). The software would be close to perfection if it had that.
- You can't recover a whole partition from a disk Image (in a way you can but it means that you will need to extract all files from the Disk image). This is a minor gripe, it sort of works the same way, so I have no idea why they didn’t include that.

Now, we all know why we are here. We like freebies, and we are cheap. So there is no way that I am going to tell you to buy their software. However, I will recommend you to keep this company on your radar. They have a ton of solutions for things that we basically never think about until they happen. I tried a decent number of recovery tools (recuva, Stellar phoenix, 7data, etc) and although they are fine in their own way, Undelete is at least one category above them when looking at overall features and effectiveness. I will be probably looking to upgrade my Undelete license to Data Studio or maybe grab Data Studio on some big sale on fall.

I hope you find this review of mine useful. Two things that are great about GOTD is that we can find out about software and companies we never heard of otherwise and also exchange opinions about them. And once in awhile an app like this one pops up that is actually worth downloading. So I am glad that LSoft did this giveaway although I wished they did it earlier. :D

Looks Great, but I guess I'll never know. Yes I read and followed the instructions, went to the instructed web page but no luck with registering. Ummmm.... what was I saying the other day?

When to close the startup tab in the program, so it stops working and closes.
Have tried multiple installation disks.
One will never so far that you can fill in the registration.

system requirements need changing from the web site says Supports

Windows 10 / 8 / Windows 7 / Windows XP / Vista / 2003 / 2008 Server Operating Systems