Windows 7: Deleted file suddenly reappears

I deleted a file a while back full of old pics. I few months later it suddenly shows up with only one picture. I made no attempt to restore it nor do I want to keep it. Anyone knows how this could happen?

Not knowing anything else surrounding the circumstances, it's near impossible to say how or why that occurred. If you care to fill us in a bit more on that information, we could attempt to make our best guesses as to why.

I made a folder with a few pics around september of last year. I then sent the folder to the recycle bin and emptied the bin around January. Today, I decided to save a picture at the same location as the deleted folder. In the "save as" window the deleted folder showed up. When I opened it from the "save as" window only one picture was left. From windows explorer the folder could not be seen, even with "show hidden folder" setting turned on. The single picture as seen from the "save as" window could not be moved because an error message saying that the picture's location could not be found. However, from the "save as" window I was able to send the old folder to the recycle bin. Not only did it show up in the bin but when I clicked "restore" the folder showed up at its initial location and could be seen using windows explorer. It still had only one picture left.

That is very weird. Have you not accessed that location in the Save As dialog since you deleted it back then? What led you to access that location this time?

no I had never saved anything else at the location where the deleted folder used to be.......

I was trying to save the picture at the same spot where the deleted folder was not in the deleted folder itself. It was then that I saw the deleted old folder still there but with only one picture inside it left

now that I think about it I did run a check disk and defragmented the C drive recently. At the time I could not run the computer normally. I had to run it in safe mode. The problem resolved itself after the check disk..... that was well after I deleted the folder......

Follow these guidelines::

Click Start - Run, type in %temp% and then click OK.

Once that temp folder is open and you can view its contents, select and delete EVERYTHING that's inside it.

It's all junk and is a good place for "nasties" to hide.


Install and run antispyware software
Free up wasted space with Disk Cleanup tool
Defragment your hard disk drive
Disconnect unused network connections:

Click Start, and then click My Computer.

On the Tools menu, click Disconnect Network Drive.

Select the network drives that you no longer need, and then click OK.

I typed in temp like you said and landed at c:/Windows/Temp. There are a bunch of different folders and files taking up 482 MB. Are you sure that I am supposed to empty this folder. Don't want to accidentally delete a system file that I need

That's just going to clear your temporary files. There should be no harm in doing that as it's not really applicable to this situation anyway. How did your computer come about requiring a disk check and not working normally?