You’ve got a password protected file that you want to recover.  If you search on the Internet, lots of companies are selling their latest password recovery programs, some good, some not so good.  How do you choose the best one for the job?  Read on to find out more.

Firstly, if you are an average person, it is unlikely that you will need password recovery software more than once.  This means that you should evaluate whether a recovery service will get you a faster result than paying for your own software.  

If you have more than one file, and you have time to spare, software may be cheaper.  If you want the fastest possible recovery, and no software installation, use a recovery service, especially if you have a Word/Excel 97 to 2003 file with default encryption.

Assuming you want to try to recover the file on your own PC, you may then want to try freeware password recovery software to see whether you can recover your password.  This may be just what you need.

If need more powerful software, then look at the vendor.  I would recommend Elcomsoft and LastBit.  Both vendors have been around for a long time.  Elcomsoft in particular has proven its cryptographic research capabilities, particularly with Adobe PDF files.  Avoid vendors who promise that their software will instantly recover all passwords – this is simply impossible in the case of file open passwords.

Remember to take into account your PC capabilities and the version of the application that you want to recover the file for.  Different versions have quite different password protection systems.  Whilst you may be able to get a program that recovers a range of applications and versions, they are usually specialised.  If you have a number of different types of files to recover, you may be able to buy a pack that contains several programs at a lower cost.

Read objective evaluations from sites such as this one.  These will highlight any usability issues and give an indication of the strengths and weaknesses of each package, performance on real world files, the value for money, and capabilities and range of recovery options.

Good vendors have trial versions of their software.  You should download these to ensure that the software can handle your type of file.  You should not expect to be able to recover the password with the trial version, but it will give you an idea of how it works.  Most packages are quite simple, and do not really require much expertise.  If you find that one is overly complicated, then there will be easier ones around.

Tags: password recovery software

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm and is filed under Choosing Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.