In the first place I wasn't dumb enough to to get rid of the old system, but
I was dumb enough to move some of the files instead of just copying them.
In the second place, I said plainly in the first post that I dragged them
across the LAN onto the desktop. THE DESKTOP. You remember the Desktop from
XP don't you. Back when it was a directory and not just a pointer to random
places around the disk. They left the Desktop on their own when I installed
SP1. They aren't in Recycle in the root of C: and in fact the Recycle Bin
icon left the desktop at the same time. Looks like they should have made
provisions for a lost+found directory in Vista.
In fact I did find most of them just now in
"C:\Windows\system32config\systemprofile\Desktop\" but it begs the question
"How did they get there?" and then "Why did they go there?" I guess I'll
just .rar the disk and settle for whatever I can find later.
At least I think I can later open the on a 32 bit machine and hope they
won't be moving by themselves again. If that doesn't work I can just install
xubuntu and mount the disk to dig out my files.
And to think, I just went with Vista to see if I could find a faster grep
for windows.
cmsix