Lost Files

[RodgerDale]

I'm new to this forum and not a high level Windows 7 troubleshooter.

Today, I noticed my desktop was missing a lot of programs that were installed, this made me suspicious so I went to Windows explorer and noticed the latest files were from July of 2010.

So the problem I'm describing is my computer seems to have files and programs listed that were on this box back in July of 2010. I can't access anything from today (May, 12, 2011 back to July of 2010).

I'm lost and looking for help from one of you black belt guru's.

Regards,

Rodger

 

[LiquidSnak]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html

This is a tutorial to run a check on your hard drives. I think you might have some corrupted sectors or the like. Everything back to July of 2010 is gone completely?

Do you keep a restore file around?

 

[RodgerDale]

I have a USB external drive as a back-up, but it also seems to only show files from July 2010 on it as well.

 

[LiquidSnak]

Do you have a backup assistant program that images the drive onto the backup regularly?

 

[RodgerDale]

Yes, my external drive does a daily back-up.

 

[DalekOverSeer]

missing files

i have pretty much the same issue. my system rolled back to 04 18 2011(a bad install of acronis). i don't care about the lost installed programs, because my other drives were not affected so reinstalling the programs is no big deal. however i do download a lot to the desktop and lost maybe a couple dozen files that i hadn't run or tested yet. what i want to know is there any program that will allow me just to scan a specific folder, and not the entire drive. since i didn't loose that much i don't care if the files are actually recoverable. all i'm interested in is getting the file names so i can replace them. any suggestions and help would be great.

 

[RodgerDale]

Hi Dale

I run a 3D CAD software called Pro/ENGINEER. So I have the know how to create any possible solid model, but when it comes to figuring out the OS of Windows 7, I'm lost.

What I have is an external USB back-up drive that does a back-up every day. I've been able to navigate to where this drive is and have been able to find my missing files.

I think in your case, you might go to the search bar and type in the name of a file you are looking for and what should happen is a window will pop up listing the file name and it's location. This is providing that the file is still on your hard drive. If you don't have an external hard drive back-up, you really need to get one.

I hope this helps a little. I'm sure one of the high level users on this forum could be far more helpful than me.

Rodger

 

[DalekOverSeer]

Hi Dale

I run a 3D CAD software called Pro/ENGINEER. So I have the know how to create any possible solid model, but when it comes to figuring out the OS of Windows 7, I'm lost.

What I have is an external USB back-up drive that does a back-up every day. I've been able to navigate to where this drive is and have been able to find my missing files.

I think in your case, you might go to the search bar and type in the name of a file you are looking for and what should happen is a window will pop up listing the file name and it's location. This is providing that the file is still on your hard drive. If you don't have an external hard drive back-up, you really need to get one.

I hope this helps a little. I'm sure one of the high level users on this forum could be far more helpful than me.

Rodger

glad to hear you got your files back, i know from experience it's a pain to loose files. as for using search it won't help in this case. as i said do to a bad install of acronis my system was thrown back to 04 18 2011, so everything downloaded to the desktop, everything installed after that point, and any settings changed after that point were completely rolled back. now i know most likely the files i want to recover are still there, because once it happened i stopped doing anything from the desktop. including launching programs, saving files to it, or changing settings that might effect it. at this point i would even settle for a way to restore the registry to where it was the day before yesterday just long enough to get the file names. as for backups i'm a bit annul. i have my c drive and 3 other internal drives for anything i don't want to loose, plus everything on those three drives are backed up weekly to an external.