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Microsoft has a cure for data nuked by fat fingers if you're not afraid of the command line

Plus: Windows Forms on Arm64 in .NET 5, Live Events to live on

In brief While not able to undelete Microsoft's shuttered stores, accidentally borked files stand a chance at redemption thanks to the Windows File Recovery tool.

Undelete has been a thing in the Windows world for many a year, although Windows File Recovery (first spotted by WalkingCat) takes things a little further with support for the NTFS, FAT, exFAT and ReFS file systems as well HDD, SSD, USB and memory card smarts.

Sadly, for those hoping for salvation from friends-and-family support calls, the store app lacks a GUI and is command line only. Command line switches control the behaviour of the tool including filtering options for the recovered files.

Three modes are supported: Default (best for that immediate "oh heck" moment), Segment (for files deleted a while ago, or on a corrupted disk) and Signature (for supported file types, such as ZIP, and the recommended way to recover data from a FAT, exFAT or ReFS file system).

It's a neat tool, although power users will likely have their own selection of spanners and screwdrivers to undo whoopsies. It also requires Windows 10 19041 or later.

Windows Forms comes to Arm64 in .NET 5

Preview 6 of the Microsoft's .NET 5 framework was released last week and brought forth Windows Forms support for those lucky enough to be using a device running the company's Windows on Arm operating system.

Arm64 support first turned up in Preview 4 of the framework, but only in console and ASP.NET form. Windows Forms support will allow those running Visual Studio 16.7 to pop something more graphical onto the Windows on Arm desktop. WPF support, however, is still being worked on.

Giving rise to the spectre of Visual Basic (everyone's favourite .NET development platform, right?) the team has also added the ability to force Windows Forms apps to be single-instanced. More steps were also taken toward to glorious goal of "single file apps", although the Windows variant will require "a few extra runtime files".

The gang is past the midway point for .NET 5 now and is starting to "close down the release" ahead of the polish, fit and finish work required before General Availability can be declared.

Live Events increase get a life extension and teachers take back control (on Teams)

Finally, some good news for those using Microsoft's platforms for their events. The temporary increase in attendees for Microsoft 365 live events (in the likes of Teams, Stream and Yammer) to 20,000 will persist for a bit longer. Originally due to expire on 1 July, Microsoft has extended it to 1 October.

The move comes as the company continues to tinker with its Teams product. Having trailed features due to turn up later this year, the company has rolled out one that will be welcomed by those tasked with using the platform for education: it is now possible to stop students from joining Teams meetings unattended.

Students will also be unable to chat unless a teacher is present.

The "Students must wait in lobby" feature is due to hit in July, but last week's new toys can be enabled as soon as an administrator sets the meeting policy. It can take up to 24 hours for the new meeting policy to take effect, and the poppets need to inflict the latest version of the Teams desktop client on their systems. ®

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