Sticky Notes content lost - any chance to recover?

Hi Mike -

We may add to a thread even if it's marked Solved since it can often be the top result on a Google search for the problem and want it current for those who find it that way. In this case the question posed by the OP in the post claiming it was solved was also ambiguous enough to add further ideas.

The best way to catch the eye of someone who knows the issue specifically is to hone the Title so it describes it in a glance, if that's possible, and place it in General forum. It's how I've always gotten my fastest and best answers. Be sure to also watch this thread as it may pick up responses.

1) You're very much correct in that the core issue here wasn't determined or resolved, due to the fact that we can't/don't know what exactly caused this problem in the first place. However, the user was able to recover the sticky notes, so the issue of them being lost was fixed. We could certainly continue to discuss the circumstances surrounding this loss if the OP were to continue to post in here, but that often does not happen once an issue is solved to the point of at least being able to move on in terms of productivity on the machine. The thread being marked solved is the choice of the user, obviously, so we depend on their feedback as to whether or not they are satisfied with the responses thus far or whether discussions need to continue. So, there's not much we can do if the OP has moved on. Perhaps they will return to the thread here.

2) I was referring to the following quote on my response:

mgross333 said:

I also, based on 7 years experience fixing PCs, do not think that the SFC /scannow approach will fix ANYTHING.

So, I was pointing out how many people's experience on this forum is quite contrary to your opinion of that, regardless of any later qualifying or contradictory statements.

The chance of file corruption occurring in a short period probably is very low, but that doesn't mean you rule it out. With a state of the art Sony laptop that costs that much with all of that fast storage, running SFC would take little to no time and could be run in conjunction with whatever else you're doing. Personally, I don't see any reason not to run it as it can only help, but it is obviously a judgment call. It's unfortunate you haven't had any useful experiences with running it in the past, but many people here have, so I hope you continue to give it a chance as it's a rather useful tool provided by Microsoft.

It is possible that this issued was caused by a Windows Update. No one is ruling that out. It could be, it could not be. It's just as likely as a corrupt system file, though, as they aren't mutually exclusive things. Either can cause issues at any point. Or, it could be something else we're not considering. The bottom line is that you are attempting to make an educated guess based on your experiences just as everyone else is doing on here. Obviously, no one thus far has a direct response as to the particular reason the stickies disappeared in this case, but we can continue to search. Personally, I'm surprised you posted to the Experts Exchange forum as I don't believe very many people have much luck on there, myself included in the way past before I realized what a dearth of help it was. Although you might be frustrated with responses so far on here, I would argue that this forum provides orders of magnitude more help than that one.

FliGi7,

Customer now says stickynotes disappear in about a day. Which is similar to OP here saying two days.

Does that info help in getting a solution ?

Regarding Sfc /scannow I will try it if and when I get onsite BUT have little hope for a fix from it.

Regarding Experts Exchange (EE) forum, I disagree 100%. I have over 600 closed threads there in 6 years and most produced a solution. In particular I recently posted a number of Windows 7 or Office 2010 issues on the Microsoft professional forum and on Experts exchange and all but one solution came from Experts exchange and even the one solution on the MS forum was also posted on Experts Exchange. In fact at the MS forum practically no one even replied . I have no comparison with sevenforums as two days ago was my first thread here.

Many posters on EE do it for the points and THAT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE. Those posters have an incentive. However not all posters there care about points.

Mike

Oops, I was thinking of and referring to the MS forum (as you also mention not being too great), NOT the experts exchange forum. Apologies for that. I have certainly seen good stuff on EE.

Is your customer's computer on a domain? If so, it's incredibly hard to diagnose issues with those as there are so many variables that can be changed and are particular to the given domains. Only the people who have set those up could help to figure out why some things might be disappearing or not working as related to current group or domain policies on the machines.

FliGi7,

Customer PC is not on a domain. At home and at his office is wireless to a home router (Linksys at work, Home is another major brand). No Windows Server involved at all.

Mike

Well, I'm curious to know if you find anything out from the EE forum on what they might have to say. I can't think of any reason for them to disappear. I've never had a problem with them. Is the customer using any sort of system or registry cleaner/optimizer? I've also often wondered if disappearing sticky notes had something to do with the desktop cleanup wizard, but I have never looked into it.

Nothing usefull at EE forum. Customer now says he enters ??? (StickyNotes) in Start button search windows and sees files whose names are the missing stickynote's text. That is impossible two ways

(1) All text is in C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Sticky Notes.snt
ONE file not many files.

(2) Entering StickyNotes in search windows STARTS the program !!! It does not display a folder (i.e explorer).

Because of this plus no response from forums on problem, I am going to go onsite and see problem as I think he is not describing it accurately. But because the notes take a days to disappear, the most important symptom can NOT be seen in one visit and that is VERY BAD.

Mike

mgross333 said:

Also this is a 3 month old PC with two 250 gb solid state drives in a striped RAID config (a literal $4,500 state of the art Sony laptop). The chance that file corruption of any kind has occurred in that period is low.

Not to say this has anything to do with the loss of the stickynotes, but that RAID configuration adds to the chances of corruption.

Curious to know what this machine is used for, given the fact it's already got super fast drives. Is the user actually gaining that much by using RAID0?

sibbil,

No choice about RAID. It comes that way from Sony. The SSD's plus RAID striping PLUS i7 Intel chip plus lots of memory make it superfast and that is what he cares about. He is CEO of a corporation. He handles maybe 150 emails a day and saves lots of Word, Excel and PDF attachments. He also has 4G internet-anywhere (but not 4GLTE). He spends a third of his time traveling mostly to St.Petersburg, Russia where he has most of his employees.

WHY DOES RAID INCREASE THE CHANCE OF FILE CORRUPTION ? Hasn't RAID striping been around for many years and by now should be reliable? And in a laptop at a $4,500 cost, you can be sure Sony did not cut corners in choosing a RAID controller.

Mike