My photos have disappeared! :(

Dannywhite · 11 Apr 2011

Hi all, I wonder if you can help me.

I've just added a load more photos to "My Pictures". I have gone back in to look at them, and the entire library has disappeared! I have tried searching for the folders within it on the "search" function, but they are not coming up. I have checked the hard drive to see if I've accidentally deleted them, but the amount of free space is the same.

This is not the first time this has happened - the "My Videos" folder disappeared last year - never to be seen again. I just made another one then. However, I haven't got the pictures stored anywhere else.

Is there any way I can restore this? I have tried system restore but it doesn't appear to have been set up - I haven't used it.

Thanks for your time.

Kind regards

Danny White

Golden · 11 Apr 2011

Hi Danny - Welcome to SevenForums.

There are a few things we need to check:

Are the folders Hidden?
Open Windows Explorer. Click the Tools menu on the top of the menu bar, and then click on Folder Options. Click the View tab. Now place a tick in the Show hidden files, folders and drives option as shown below, and then click the Apply button.

My photos have disappeared! :(-capture.png

Now go back to Explorer and see if you can find your folders.

Check to see that the photo's don't exist in other shell folders?
1. Click

and in the search box type shell:PicturesLibrary and hit enter.
2. The result should look like this:

My photos have disappeared! :(-capture1.png

3. Click the folder, and see if it takes you to your pictures.
4. Also try the same thing with these shell commands:

shell:SamplePictures
shell:SampleVideos
shell:UsersLibrariesFolder
shell:VideosLibrary
shell:My Pictures
shell:My Video
shell:Recent
shell:CommonPictures

(You can copy and paste from the text above directly into your search box to make it easier)

Do you have malware on your system that may be tampering with your folders?
Please tell us what anti-virus/malware software you have running on your PC. Please download, install, update and run Malwarebytes. Do a FULL SCAN and post the results here.

Regards,
Golden

Shootist · 11 Apr 2011

If these were JPG file format try a search for *.jpg.

You may be better off getting and using some other file search program like Agent Ransack. I've been using for about the last week and it finds everything. I just hate the Win 7 search function and as MS would have it the built in search only finds thing MS wants you to find, hiding other things in the guise you, the users, don't need to see those things.