Save yourself some trouble. If you already know the extension of the file(s) you want to get back, just rename all your CHK files to the desired extension and see what works. The programs here are for when you have way too many CHK files to test or when you have way too many different file extensions you want to recover.

So what is a CHK file? Well, any time a software or Windows crashes, any files that were open are not closed properly. Part of closing is writing all the file location information in all the right places. Without this info, Windows can't find all the parts of the file. When SCANDISK or CHKDISK is run, all the parts are identified as "lost file fragments" and converted (if you want) into CHK files. Face it. Stuff crashes all the time. If you only run SCANDISK once a month, you get a month's worth of old crash junk. If you were working on (and lost) something important just before a crash, you might want to try to recover any data from any CHK files that exist. On the other hand, if you aren't in a state of panic over lost data, just delete any CHK files. A convenient tip: Keep your disk defragmented. That way if you ever do lose it all, the lost file fragments will be more likely to be complete files.

Welcome Competition! A nice guy named Martin Kratz wrote a software to compete with my UnCHK program. Amazingly, he sent me the source code. So... I compiled it and am offering it here for your consideration. Now you have two open-source CHK file recovery programs to choose from!

The FileCHK software was designed to be a small tool that will check for files named FILE????.CHK in its directory and rename those CHK files to the correct extension.

FileCHK can identify the following file types:
1. 3DS - 3D Studio
2. AI - Adobe Illustrator
3. ASF - Microsoft Multimedia
4. AVI - Windows Movie
5. BMP - Windows Bitmap Image
6. CAB - Microsoft Cabinet
7. CDR - CorelDRAW
8. CHM - Compiled Help
9. DOC - Word Document
10. DWG - AutoCad Drawing
11. EXE - Executable Program
12. GIF - Compressed bitmap
13. HLP - Windows Help
14. HTM - Web Page
15. JPG - Compressed Picture
16. LNK - Windows Shortcut
17. MDB - Access Database
18. MID - MIDI Music
19. MOV - QuickTime Movie
20. MP3 - Compressed Music
21. MPG - Compressed Movie
22. PDF - Adobe Acrobat
23. PSD - Adobe Photoshop
24. PST - Outlook Personal Folder
25. QT - QuickTime Movie
26. RAR - RAR Compressed Archive
27. RMI - MIDI Music
28. SWF - Macromedia Shockwave
29. TIF - Tagged Image Format
30. TTF - Font
31. TXT - Plain Text
32. URL - Internet Shortcut
33. WAV - Sound
34. XLS - Excel Spreadsheet
35. ZIP - PK Compressed Archive

SoftSea Editor's Note: FileCHK need the Visual Basic 5 runtime files, which come pre-installed on Windows 2000 and newer. But if you use Windows 7, you need install Visual Basic 5 runtime files by yourself.

The license of this software is Freeware, you can free download and free use this data recovery software.