New
#1
Gone/Disappeared: Entire folder and subfolders!
Got an awful shock last night. Opened word-processing program, "Open recent documents" menu came up, clicked on the recently-used document I wanted. Error message: "Document does not exist"!!!!!!
Went straight to explorer, navigated to the file through various folders and subfolders, found that not only was the one document not there, but all the other documents in that sub-folder had gone too, ditto for all other documents in all other sub-folders inside the parent folder. In short, a whole main folder and all its sub-folders and their content files had just vanished!
But a new folder was visible! It was called oddly, something like, "7i3k8gbweklvbnpfvn4d8s" !!!!
So, in the hope that my folder's name had simply been corrupted somehow, I opened this strange new folder. Empty.
Checked inside the Recycle Bin. Nothing there.
Right-clicked on the new folder to "Restore previous versions": nothing offered.
Used "System Restore" to return my computer to the state it was in five hours earlier. This no doubt restored some things, but it did not return that missing folder to me.
Did full virus and malware scans, including a boot-scan. Nothing found.
Remote Access to my computer is not enabled. (Yes, I was considering the possibility of some malicious person having possibly hacked into my computer and deliberately deleted an important folder.)
My Firewall is turned on - no incoming connections allowed.
I was mystified but not unduly worried because only the night before I had made a mirror-image of my entire computer using Macrium Reflect. So I only needed to save the latest emails and a couple of browser bookmarks to a memory stick and then do a system-wide restore using Reflect.
So I have returned everything back to normal thanks to Reflect . . . but when will such a thing happen again? And what on earth caused it?
Have done some googling and have found I am not alone. A large number of people have had problems with entire folders disappearing from Windows 7.
In case, anyone with advanced knowledge can shed light on this problem, my lost folder was in the following situation. My computer has two partitions: C drive for programs, and F drive for all data (pictures, audio files, video files, texts, etc.). The structure of the F drive is:
F: Data Only
Folder: My Website
Folder: My Texts
Folder: My Pictures
Folder: My Audio
Folder: My Preferences
Folder: My Videos
The folder that disappeared (or which was renamed and emptied) was "My Texts".
There's most probably a cause or glitch that I don't know about, but I'm wondering if Windows 7 "doesn't like" my having created a "My Texts" folder - which doesn't conform to its own way of naming things. Perhaps I had better change "My Texts" to "My Documents".
Any helpful advice will be much appreciated.