BC> Since old .rep files are deleted and overwritten,

 JP>         In this instance, it was a very recently lost (deleted)  
 JP> file. I would have presumed that it would still be somewhere to  
 JP> look at and regain. Not the case here. I wonder where it went ? 

under win9x (and i assume ME) files are deleted by altering the first
character to a special character... i've had /some/ luck in recovery but it
must be done very quickly... the problem is that the system, as it is now,
writes data to the drive at any time... this means that, at any time, it
may overwrite recently deleted files... i'm not sure how deletes are
handled on NTFS formatted drives but since NTFS is a brother to HPFS, i
suspect that they are the same or close...

in the old days of single tasking systems, recovery of deleted files was
relatively simple... one only needed to directly access the FAT tables and
replace that first character of the deleted file with another and the file
would generally be fully "undeleted"... very easy and a tad bit
of slight of hand majik...

the problem, in todays world, is like i state above... the system may write
files or data to the drive at any time... this is why the trashcan or
recycle bin was created... when deleting files from the command line, they
are gone without the "move" to the recycle bin or trashcan...

HTH in the education and/or rememberances...

)\/(ark