Any IT. pc experts out there?

[Carlo]

Need to know if it's possible to retrieve deleted internet history on a windows 8 laptop.
Lets just say someones not been honest in what they've been doing on my laptop! and i'd like to check.

 

[LC2]

System Restore may be your friend here.
It returns your computer to an earlier state.

Of course, that may be before the point you want, and you will have to patch / update anything you've put on since the last restore point.

I just had a quick google, and there is also a file called index.dat which records all sites a browser has visited, and there is viewer/reader software out there. You learn something every day! That would probably be my first approach, rather than a system restore.

 

[neil_g]

yup, they generally all hang out in the computers section

system restore wont undelete any data.

are we talking IE?

 

[neil_g]

if IE10 then the history cache is located here:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WebCache\WebCacheV01.dat

however i think this overwrites when cleared.

 

[Carlo]

yup, they generally all hang out in the computers section

system restore wont undelete any data.

are we talking IE?

google chrome

 

[wave01]

what are you worried about

 

[LC2]

yup, they generally all hang out in the computers section

system restore wont undelete any data.

are we talking IE?

It does restore the registry though, and system files. I mistakenly assumed IE as the OP didn't state a browser.
(IE being pretty much a system componenet).

A quick google on chrome recovery gave:

======================================================================================
Chrome saves all the history and preferences in this directory:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default

You can open most of the files in this directory with a SQLITE3 database viewer. Chrome deletes all the history databases if you delete the history. There is no easy way to recovery it.
======================================================================================

And (of course) Incognito mode is designed to not save history.

 

[neil_g]

It does restore the registry though, and system files. I mistakenly assumed IE as the OP didn't state a browser.
(IE being pretty much a system componenet).

i dont think it would include a cache file in that list of things to restore. would be more core files like dll.

 

[LC2]

Yeah, to be fair, it's probably not going to recover a deleted index.dat.
It will recover anything in the registry though.

And, as the info in index.dat isn't deleted when you delete history.......

Still, we aren't talking about IE here, Chrome would appear to be less susceptable to recovery tools.

 

[neil_g]

indeed, you could try recovery tools but i suspect the file would just be plain overwritten or wiped so you'd need versioning in place already.

short answer OP - no

 

[big soft moose]

Need to know if it's possible to retrieve deleted internet history on a windows 8 laptop.
Lets just say someones not been honest in what they've been doing on my laptop! and i'd like to check.

roughly translated you've been looking at naughty pictures on your girlfriends laptop and now you're afraid you'll get busted , yes ? - good news as above you're safe , bad news she probably knows anyway from the amount of time you've been spending in the bathroom