Keldyn Posted September 26, 2001 Share Posted September 26, 2001 Okay...now this has totally got me freaked. By default i just store all my junk in the My Documents Folder on the Desktop. I had accumulated about 4 gig worth of files in there, alot of which is rather important to me. Today when i went to open the folder, i get ( in typical windows fashion ) a none too helpful error message informing me that the folder no longer exists, or is an invalid link to... ( can't remember which ) At one point i was able to open the folder and to my horror it was empty !! Four gig of files just gone ! Man....whats up with that ? Ghosts in the Machine ? My HD has its own Bermuda Triangle ? I checked the folders properties and strangely it tells me my 4.01 gig of data is there only i cannot view it. I rebooted into safe mode but that failed to give me access to my data. Something i did notice which could be a clue is that when i went into the root of my C: drive, my My Documents folder had suddenly aquired a /%s or something of the kind infront of it like it would if it were a network drive i guess.....When trying to open this folder from the root of my c drive it tells me that this is an invalid path. I went into properties and used the option to revert to default and that too failed. I then tried to rename the folder, only i quickly noticed i was not even given the option of doing so. Perplexed i sat and mused over this strange phenomenon for a while ( much beer and munchies consumed in the meantime ) and still no solution. What do you think people ? Nortons AV 8 failed to detect any suspicious activity and i had made no significant changes to my drive structure when this occured. Infact all i was doing at the time was reading the posts on neowin.net ;) A system Restore has failed to help. My System Specs are: Intel PIII 1Ghz MSI 6337 815EP Pro Mobo 256MB PC133 Ram ( crucial brand ) Seagate Barrracuda 30 GB ATA 100 HD nVIDIA Geforce 2 MX 400 & 21.81 Detonators Creative Vibra 128 pci sound card 17" LG FLATRON 795FT Plus Monitor@ 100Mhz Acer 10x8x42 CD/RW Drive LG CRD-8480M cdrom 48x Alcatel USB Speed Touch DSL Modem & SURECOM EP-320X-R Network Card Windows XP Professional Any assistance, thoughts or ideas on this bizarre occurence will be most appreciated. Thanx in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger H. Veteran Posted September 26, 2001 Veteran Share Posted September 26, 2001 I think you got that new virus that Newin.com has on it's main page. It deletes your files in the background without you knowing. Looks deadly and i don't wanna catch it. I have like 40GB of stuff on my hardrive that i haven't burned yet (I see you have a burner.. can I email you that and you burn it for me and ship me some CDs?) LOL:cheeky: anyways.. I need to get some money to go buy this burner cuz I don't wanna loose all that stuff... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keldyn Posted September 26, 2001 Author Share Posted September 26, 2001 LOL 40 GB huh ? I think you would probably have to email me 1mb at a time for the next 10 years or so....i hope you arent in a hurry to get those cd's now ....:D ~Keldyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icie Posted September 26, 2001 Share Posted September 26, 2001 Uh, it probably is a virus as my esteemed colleague has said. But I think that you can try using a DOS command to try accessing the files? Try booting to DOS to rename the My Documents or whatever, and if you can get in and see your files, copy them to another directory on your computer and burn it ASAP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mortensen Posted September 28, 2001 Share Posted September 28, 2001 Sounds nasty. I had around 2gig of PROGRAMS and FILES wiped not too long ago from the CRAP uninstaller for Half-Life, so I know how it feels. I hope you can recover the data! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keldyn Posted September 29, 2001 Author Share Posted September 29, 2001 Thanx mortensen and the good news is that i was able to recover most of it. I managed to find a second HD and connected my primary up as slave and was able to copy the data over to this new disk. ( most of it anyway...some was corrupted...) I since decided to play it safe, backed up everything i could and did a complete format and reinstall ( back to FAT32 ) and now everything is flying along nicely. I suspect the problem may have something to do with NTFS partitions and file permissions. It seems to be a little flaky under XP....:ermm: And yeah...i feel your pain....i recall reading about the issue you had with the Half Life Uninstaller and i can confirm you arent alone in that. Same thing happened to me. Damn game seems to have a mind of its own eh ? For once i would like to run an uninstaller and have it do exactly what it is supposed to, and not just indiscriminately trash your disk. With all the dodgy software being released these days its like playing russian roulette.....but thats just my take on it... Thanx again for the replies :) ~Keldyn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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