Files lost after shutdown

[Guest]

Hi,

I am a Vista premium user(32 bit). I had few folders on my desktop that
contained video, audio , photos, docs etc. Once after shutting down my laptop
and restarting later, I found to my shock that all those folders were gone.

I browsed and found that most of them were under "recently changed", but
some were still missing and I could not trace them even on searching. I
reconciled to my fate and moved some of them from "recently changed" to a new
folder on my desktop. After some time I shut down once more and restarted it.

Voila! the old folders reappeared on my desktop but to my horror the files
that I had moved from "recently changed" to my desktop during the last
session were no longer traceable. On searching I could only find the
shortcuts but not the files. I restarted my laptop many times but the result
is same every time.

Any idea whats going on? Is there any way I can recover my files?

Thanks,
Tirtha

 

[Richard Urban]

I am not certain as to what is going on. But, I will give you a time tested
suggestion. Do not ever save actual files on your desktop, even in a desktop
folder. Save the files in your user folder (Documents and it sub-folders)
and put shortcuts on the desktop that point to the files saved elsewhere.

Reason? There are cleanup utilities that may clean out "unused" desktop
items if they have not been accessed for a certain number of days.

In Windows XP this was done by default, after 30 days - unless you turned it
off.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Lee]

Hi,

I am a Vista premium user(32 bit). I had few folders on my desktop that
contained video, audio , photos, docs etc. Once after shutting down my
laptop
and restarting later, I found to my shock that all those folders were
gone.

I browsed and found that most of them were under "recently changed", but
some were still missing and I could not trace them even on searching. I
reconciled to my fate and moved some of them from "recently changed" to a
new
folder on my desktop. After some time I shut down once more and restarted
it.

Voila! the old folders reappeared on my desktop but to my horror the files
that I had moved from "recently changed" to my desktop during the last
session were no longer traceable. On searching I could only find the
shortcuts but not the files. I restarted my laptop many times but the
result
is same every time.

Any idea whats going on? Is there any way I can recover my files?

Thanks,
Tirtha

After my system locked up once then blue-screened it rebooted to an
unfamiliar generic Desktop with none of my personal folders. When I
rebooted, as in your case, my original desktop returned. I would guess that
the files you moved are on this now hidden Desktop under the protected
Documents and Setting folder. Now how to gain access to that, I don't know.

 

[Lee]

After my system locked up once then blue-screened it rebooted to an
unfamiliar generic Desktop with none of my personal folders. When I
rebooted, as in your case, my original desktop returned. I would guess
that the files you moved are on this now hidden Desktop under the
protected Documents and Setting folder. Now how to gain access to that, I
don't know.

After a bit of reading I think the folder is now located under C:\Users.
Documents and Settings doesn't exist any more, even though a shortcut to it
still exists. The error message is misleading.