Help! My Files Are Invisible!

[Hydrology]

I just rebooted my machine, and when I open the Windows Explorer, I don't see any of my files on any of my drives. All of the directories and sub directories seem to be there, but none of the files show up. When I go into properties on a directory, it shows that files are there (hopefully all of them) but they don't show up in the right pane of the window.

I tried rebooting and it didnt improve. Any help would be appreciated because I am dead in the water!!!!!


I am using Windows 7 Pro 64bit, 16Gig of RAM, on a dual processor Xeon workstation.
I have 2 SAS Raid hard drives and 2 USB external drives.
It has been installed for over 4 months.

 

[richc46]

See this hope it works. Our tutorials written by our own Brink is a cornucopia of information. Hope it helps in this case. If not post back and we will try another solution.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/56005-file-folder-hide-unhide.html?ltr=F

Possibly due to corruption the files are hidden. I will admit that this is a long shot, but everything is worth a try.

With the wealth of knowledge available at this forum. do not worry, you will get your files back.

 

[Hydrology]

I have checked that process and I dont think that is the problem. I am not even seeing the files on our company server, but I do see the driectories. We have over a half million files in 40,000 or so directories, divided over 4 disk arrays. They cant all be hidden, not to mention all of the files directories and discks on my local machine. It almost seems to be a font problem. It is like the font is white on a white background.

I can see the files if I open up an application and try to access the files through the file/open command of that application.

 

[richc46]

Have you thought of a system restore, to a point before the problem?

These seem like important files. Back up what you have now and try a system restore. That works in 9 out of 10 tries. I wish you luck

 

[Hydrology]

Thanks for the response, but after about a half day, they suddenly appeared. I dont know why they went and I dont know how they came back. I am fiinding more and more that there are little subtle instabilities in Windows 7 that dont show up right away when you first start using the OS. I have recently found a few number crunching programs that were developed for XP and will run on 7 without any errors, but give the wrong answer when you examine the output. Pretty damn scarry!

 

[madhavi]

k letme tell you even though u think u have lost all the information dat u want .. neednt worry abt tht becoz u can get the information even after recovery ie formatting ur computer ie u can actly get the information thru recovery backup suite so trust me what ever stored on the hard drive can never be erased k so dnt worry abt that .. and its very gud to c that u got ur information back again...

 

[davehc]

That waas scary! <<<i must admit, using both 64Bit and 32 Bit, that I have not experienced any windows 7 instabliities, but I am waiting for the other shoe to drop!
But, fwiw, Windows Explorer first assesses the operation of all connected drives on the computer, then the contents. I would suggest in you case, that for whatever reason, there was a temporary glitch in one of your USB external drives.

 

[Hydrology]

That could be, because lately I have been using 3 or 4 external USB drives at a time. Maybe plugging and unplugging them confused the OS.

But another problem that I have recently noticed is that the OS is periodically loosing my login credentials to the company server. After working fine for several hours, when I try to get to my mapped drives, I get a dialogue box that says that the drive is not accessible. I can get to the server through the network icon below my mapped drives in file manager, but it asks me for my login and password again. After I enter my login and password I can get to my files on the server, but I have to remap my previously mapped drives to get them to respond again. I should probably put this in a separate post.