new comp now all files are deleted from network!!

[tdean]

i appologize ahead of time for the double pos, but this is extremely important. i added the president of the school i work at to the network on a new machine and now every one of her old files is gone. she was on a win95 machine and i replaced that with a laptop running 2k. does anyone know where her old files are? has anyone heard of this happening before?

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[jihiggs]

if the files were on the network they are still there, if they were on her hard drive they are still on the old one, whats the problem here? it is my expirience that 99% of the people that use computers have absolutely no idea how files work, and they dont care to know. they learn how to get to their files the wrong way and they dont know any way else. they also like to lie about the wherabouts of their files. want me to call em up and chastize them about file organisation? i do it all the time at work. it was a mess when we upgraded to windows 2000.

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[tdean]

well, i sure hope im doing something wrong, b/c this is HUGE!! heres what i did. unplugged her comp, hooked up a laptop w/2k for her. all her drives are still mapped, but the folders were empty. i checked her old comps c drive and there is nothing. then i went to the server and looked in her folder.... nothing. then i searched the server for the file names and nothing came up. i swear nothing was deleted. i even checked the recycle bins of the old machine and server. i would never delete anything by mistake. is there anything i can do?

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[tdean]

oh, heres another f'd up thing at work.... one of the teachers cant delete any files. when she tries, they reappear when she reboots.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[jihiggs]

changing computers doesnt delete files. there is nothing that would make the files disapear. perhaps they were saving their files to a folder others use? the folder you are talking about, are they the only one that have access to it? if all else fails, you do have a backup right?

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[jihiggs]

on their computer or a network share?

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[tdean]

well, thats the weird part. each person saves their files to a mapped drive with their name on it. no one else goes into it. like i said, i even searched the server for some of the files i had names of. this is actually the second time this happened to someone over there. i know files dont just disappear, but i swear they arent there.... the person that was supposed to back the files up, didnt.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[tdean]

network share... from her folder. im planning on replacing everything.... new server, switches etc.... the person that was doing this before had no idea what she was doing....

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by tdean on 08/30/02 01:33 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[jlanka]

have you tried hooking the original PC back up to see if they magically reappear?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tdean]

oh, i sure did.... no magic. this sucks.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[jihiggs]

there is a chance that swaping computers did somthing but only if you have some quirky security pos software running, all signs point to user error.

how do you shoot the devil in the back? what happens if you miss? -verbal

 

[jlanka]

I'm confused - where were the files located? On a 2K server? In a network share? How many were there? Do you know the names of the folders they were in? I'm assuming you do because you said you searched for some files. If so, is an entire directory tree/branch missing? Is the share still there?

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tdean]

there was no user error, im positive. i hooked up 20 others the past 2 days. i'll tell you ecactly how its set up. first, we have an nt server. each staff member has a drive mapped to their user folder on the "u" drive. in this case, it is bbarry. so i took her old win95 machine out, added her 2k laptop added her to the domain etc, and rebooted. when she went into the "bbarry" folder, it was completely empty. thats the whole story.... i was right there. i checked her old system.... i checked the server. i checked the recycle bins on both, and found nothing. i swear, all i did was add her and her entire user profile folder was empty. there were 30+ files in the folder prior to this. the folder is still there, but like i said, its empty.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[jlanka]

could there perhaps be a hidden folder in the users directory named something like bbarry.old (or something like that) which may have been created somehow while adding the new machine? Also check the dates on bbarry (all dates, in the properties) for any clues as to when it was created/modified/etc. Just a thought...

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[tdean]

i will check for the hidden folders..... i am headed over there righ now. its a school, i work at and we had today off. if you can think of anything else, i would sure appreciate it.

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....

 

[Tomlin]

Just some ideas...

Are both the laptop harddrive and the network harddrive formatted as NTFS?

Can you see the files from the actual server machine? If you can't then it's very unlikely that they're still there, someone's deleted them.

If you can see them on the network then it's more likely you have some kind of authorisation problem. Have you checked the access rights of the laptop to that server?

Last shot in the dark... Have you tried showing all hiden files/system files?

 

[tdean]

yeah, both the laptop and server drive are ntfs.... i cant see the files from either machine. no one had access to these files to delete them.... thats whats driving me nuts... i found some notes that the previous admin kept and it happened to her 2 times. she added a 2k machine to the network and all the files that the person had previously, were deleted.
yes, i tried the hidden files....

....the birds seemed to be calling him, thought caw....