Missing Desktop Folders/Files [Please Help]

Hello all,

Everything was working fine until yesterday. This morning when I woke up, I realized that 3 folders were missing from my Desktop. The folders had all my articles I wrote for publication. There was nothing else in each one.

I tried every possible way to find the files again but no luck. Basically the 3 folders are GONE(VANISHED)in the blue. I tried to search the files name but there is nothing on my computer. It is not that the folders are hidden because they are not as I have searched by folder names and file names but nothing comes up.

I tried all sort of Recovery Tools but no luck, the problem is that none of them are detecting the files as deleted. So I am not sure how can I restore them if they are not found as deleted at first place.

When I try to search for a file name like I had an article named "child problems.odt" I get results in my Explorer but they are not actual files but rather Type: Shortcut in the folder/Recent.

There were about 60 articles and it took me more than 3 months to write. Can someone please help me here. I am disperate. I tried to do a disk scan for problems but no luck. I ran antivirus scan but no luck..I do not have limewire or any other p2ps. It is my work computer.

Here are the Specs

Windows 7 x64
Quad Core
4 Gig Ram

Please someone help me here..

Thank you in advance.

Message quoted 2 times
Message edited by The_Prophecy on 04-13-2010 at 09:26:01 PM

Reply to markbensona

i have no virus or such, it is just wired i can see the files in RECENT when i search but when i try to open I get a message that says the file has been moved or wrong shortcut. I have not deleted the folders I am 100% positive I did not delete all the folders. Can someone pls help

Reply to markbensona

I have not tried this software, but it's free and may be worth a shot. Also, it is possible the folder was not saved properly and inadvertenly deleted.

http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

Message edited by badge on 04-13-2010 at 05:00:46 PM

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

The most weird part is that NONE OF THE RECOVERY tools detect any of the files as deleted. That is the issue. I have tried all sort of recovery tools but none of them show any deleted files or folders with those names

Reply to markbensona

Perhaps try system restore to a time when the files were present.

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

What happens with system restore I wont lose anything right?

Reply to markbensona

Also, are all the software programs used to create the documents installed and working presently?

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

With system Restore, choose a restore point to a time before when the files were present. The system will restore to that point and restart. You can easily 'undo' the restore point and revert to present if you need to.

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

The folders contained only and only .DOC documents they were all written with Open Office I had them there for a long time and it happened this morning. I did not install or uninstall anything new last night for such a thing to happen. Open office works perfectly fine.

Message edited by markbensona on 04-13-2010 at 05:18:13 PM

Reply to markbensona

You might read through some of these forums and find a solution pertaining to Open Office and retrieving a lost document.

http://www.google.com/search?q=los [...] ox&ie=&oe=

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

I went through this thing but it is not useful because I wrote most of the articles at university and transferred to my USB, I do not have any backup of the data.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to markbensona

System Restore.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us [...] em-Restore

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

When I try to do system restore. I get a message that says --> No Restore points have been created on you computer system drive.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to markbensona

markbensona wrote :

I went through this thing but it is not useful because I wrote most of the articles at university and transferred to my USB, I do not have any backup of the data.

Perhaps go onto the Open office forum boards and ask for help recovering the documents there. Sounds like there was an error in the saving process. I've done things like 'save' back to the flash drive for example instead of choosing desktop. So, the documents were created at the university with open office then saved to usb. Then transferred to a homecomputer with Open Office installed? I suppose there are a number of reasons why those documents didn't save to the home computer properly. I am quite good at speculating. And knowing the future too. :lol:

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

Problem is that not just the files have disappeared. 3 folders with files have disappeared/vanished from my desktop. There are 20 other folders with .doc documents and they are still there and not vanished.

Reply to markbensona

markbensona wrote :

When I try to do system restore. I get a message that says --> No Restore points have been created on you computer system drive.

Yeah, no restore points to revert to. Have you looked through other sections of your Windows 7 installation. LIke do a search of the system's 'Windows' folder for example? Maybe the .doc was saved in the Windows folder by mistake. Try double clicking on My Computer and opening the System drive to get to the system folders. Search each folder seperately. Longshot, but may turn up the lost file best case scenario.

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

If the files were saved anywhere then the search function would find and display. But nothing shows up. I have tried searching for 10-11 files, they only show in recent and when I click the recent it says file moved or wrong shortcut..

Reply to markbensona

You might try this since the folders were saved to the desktop. Right click anywhere on the desktop. Choose 'View'. Be sure show desktop icons is checked. You might unchedk it and recheck it.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

badge wrote :

You might try this since the folders were saved to the desktop. Right click anywhere on the desktop. Choose 'View'. Be sure show desktop icons is checked. You might unchedk it and recheck it.

I did try that as well but no luck. It is really weird. Hopefully more people will jump in to help me. I really need my documents back. Sigh

Reply to markbensona

A lot of people had the same problem of loosing their files in desktop , it disappears all of a sudden .... to tell you the truth it is either a virus or malware it destroy the file completely and can never restore by any good chance .....

Reply to Anonymous

Gone through the same thing.. and quite interestingly it happened the night before my midterm exam. All my notes, pdfs...gone
tried recovering files through all possible means for good 4 hours and failed.
I'm trying to look for a common factor here since quite a few people experience the same thing but not so many to assume that it's some common error.

so... going back a day or two...
attempted but failed to update intel wifi link driver 5300/5100
installed and removed relevant intel wifi software.
i haven't done much with my laptop (sony vaio vgn sr590cg)
other than updating vaio related software through vaio update.
i went to a social networking site "??space" (which is an unusual activity for me)
downloaded a free software called "freemusiczilla"

the freemusiczilla is tickling my suspicion since that was a new software installed and i left it on (as in 'active process') while i was having dinner. When I came back, very important folders and files had been WIPED OUT from my desktop.

i tried system recovery but no luck.
system restore... i never expected this to happen... i'm one of those "not gonna happen to me" people...

anyway, at this point, i just want to find out what caused this... and retaliate.

windows 7 pro x64 build7600

Reply to j1j2p

markbensona wrote :

Hello all,

Everything was working fine until yesterday. This morning when I woke up, I realized that 3 folders were missing from my Desktop. The folders had all my articles I wrote for publication. There was nothing else in each one.

I tried every possible way to find the files again but no luck. Basically the 3 folders are GONE(VANISHED)in the blue. I tried to search the files name but there is nothing on my computer. It is not that the folders are hidden because they are not as I have searched by folder names and file names but nothing comes up.

I tried all sort of Recovery Tools but no luck, the problem is that none of them are detecting the files as deleted. So I am not sure how can I restore them if they are not found as deleted at first place.

When I try to search for a file name like I had an article named "child problems.odt" I get results in my Explorer but they are not actual files but rather Type: Shortcut in the folder/Recent.

There were about 60 articles and it took me more than 3 months to write. Can someone please help me here. I am disperate. I tried to do a disk scan for problems but no luck. I ran antivirus scan but no luck..I do not have limewire or any other p2ps. It is my work computer.

Here are the Specs

Windows 7 x64
Quad Core
4 Gig Ram

Please someone help me here..

Thank you in advance.

Well, you can try to download the software Glary Utilities from http://www.glarysoft.com.
The privacy and security model will provide a quick and effective way to retrieve accidentally deleted files. Hope it will work for you.

Reply to lihuahellen

I am also running Windows Vista Home Edition and all the folders I created on my desktop have either been deleted or the files inside them are gone. This is the second time this has happened in the past three months. In one of the folders where I had 5 .jpg pictures, they got zipped up into a .cab file.
When this happened the first time all three affected folders had all the files zipped up leaving just the zip file in each folder. Well this time two of the folders are completely missing, one of the folders has just the .cab file and one of the folders has only one .doc left and that .doc I just happened to have open when I think this happened. Another folder is there but completely empty.
I have Norton running as well as Webroot Spysweeper and I'm doing a full scan now but I do them regularly anyway.
Does anyone have an idea how desktop files and folders can just disappear??
Thanks.

Reply to sflin

If you logged on in a different user account? There are many unknown causes for the problems, so it's hard to say.
Well, here is a data recovery freeware for you to have a try:
http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/
Hope you can find the reasons and solutions.
If anyone know the reason ,pls tell us by the way.
Thank you very much.

Message edited by tigerfeed789 on 01-31-2011 at 04:32:02 AM

Reply to tigerfeed789

I'm in IT so it's not the usual user causes like accidentally deleting, moving, or logging in as a different user although I wish it were that simple. No other folders except the ones on the desktop are involved as far as I can tell. I'm wondering how widespread this problem is. Thanks for the suggestion though. It's a strange problem!

Reply to sflin

I am having this exact same issue. No file recovery program detects these deleted files. They all show up in the Recent folder but are definitly not in the c:\users\<user>\desktop folder. My files were random pics and documents. Even more odd was I noticed every icon removed from my desktop except a .PST, (Outlook Archive file), which was currently opened by Outlook. As soon as I rebooted the computer hoping for the best my Archive folder dissapeared as well. Has anyone found anything on this? I work in IT and just transfered to this Windows 7 PC. I hate that I lost pictures of my children that can not be replaced, and I worry about a user having this same issue. Please anyone??

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to skibum189

skibum189 wrote :

I am having this exact same issue. No file recovery program detects these deleted files. They all show up in the Recent folder but are definitly not in the c:\users\<user>\desktop folder. My files were random pics and documents. Even more odd was I noticed every icon removed from my desktop except a .PST, (Outlook Archive file), which was currently opened by Outlook. As soon as I rebooted the computer hoping for the best my Archive folder dissapeared as well. Has anyone found anything on this? I work in IT and just transfered to this Windows 7 PC. I hate that I lost pictures of my children that can not be replaced, and I worry about a user having this same issue. Please anyone??

I'm guessing it's not an entirely good idea to store folders and contents in those folders on the desktop. I've created shortcuts on the desktop now and no longer keep folders there. Haven't had it happen since that time and have never lost anything other than what was stored on the desktop

Reply to sflin

Try this... Start button... search for Folder Options... click view... select show hidden files...

FYI... never store files on the desktop...

Reply to techresults

markbensona wrote :

Hello all,

Everything was working fine until yesterday. This morning when I woke up, I realized that 3 folders were missing from my Desktop. The folders had all my articles I wrote for publication. There was nothing else in each one.

I tried every possible way to find the files again but no luck. Basically the 3 folders are GONE(VANISHED)in the blue. I tried to search the files name but there is nothing on my computer. It is not that the folders are hidden because they are not as I have searched by folder names and file names but nothing comes up.

I tried all sort of Recovery Tools but no luck, the problem is that none of them are detecting the files as deleted. So I am not sure how can I restore them if they are not found as deleted at first place.

When I try to search for a file name like I had an article named "child problems.odt" I get results in my Explorer but they are not actual files but rather Type: Shortcut in the folder/Recent.

There were about 60 articles and it took me more than 3 months to write. Can someone please help me here. I am disperate. I tried to do a disk scan for problems but no luck. I ran antivirus scan but no luck..I do not have limewire or any other p2ps. It is my work computer.

Here are the Specs

Windows 7 x64
Quad Core
4 Gig Ram

Please someone help me here..

Thank you in advance.

Same here, all the stuff in My Documents folder was replaced by four empty folders, Scanned Documents, Fax, My Stationary, and Notes. Search doesn't get the results, used file recovery program program, no luck. And I'm pretty sure I didn't delete all the stuff or make those new folders . Also, System files/and folders and hidden files/folders are both on, so that is not the problem.

Reply to syedsufyan

Hi guys

Just happend to me the same!!!
And this is not the first time this happens...!!!
OMG what is wrong with this windows 7!!!

Reply to pedronery

Quote :

OMG what is wrong with this windows 7!!!

Stand tall and be more specific about the Windows 7 problem so we can diagnose the level of user error involved.

------------------------------ "To better understand why you need a personal computer, let's take a look at the pathetic mess you call your life."
Reply to badge

OLD thread,please start a new one!

------------------------------

http://i1123.photobucket.com/albums/l546/area51reopened/Moderator1-1.jpg

http://valid.canardpc.com/cache/banner/2383852.png

Reply to Area51reopened

Forum Windows 7 : Security Missing Desktop Folders/Files [Please Help]

General Discussion

Configuration & Customization

Drivers

Security

Please mind