Desktop documents/folders no longer available?

[MILK MAN]

Before i upgraded to Vista from XP i I backed up My documents, favorites, pst
etc etc and i also backed up my desktop items. To do that i opened my
Windows explorer and dragged and dropped all my misc docs and folders on the
notebook desktop and copied them onto my external HD. I checked my external
HD to verify that all these critical docs etc on my desktop were now safely
backed up. I opened several docs and everything seemed to be working fine.

4 Days Later:

I have since then upgraded from notebook from XP to Vista and now after
copying
my desktop docs and folders from the back up drive onto my laptop with Vista
they seem to be pointing to nowhere. Suddenly I'm completely baffled and in
shock (did i mention freaking out?) When i try opening any of those desktop
docs I get the error message:
"the network connection or drive that your shortcut refers to is
unavailable..." SHORTCUT? I DIDNT KNOW THESE WERE SHORTCUTS! These are
critical docs and am not sure what to do...

 

[M.I.5¾]

Before i upgraded to Vista from XP i I backed up My documents, favorites,
pst
etc etc and i also backed up my desktop items. To do that i opened my
Windows explorer and dragged and dropped all my misc docs and folders on
the
notebook desktop and copied them onto my external HD. I checked my
external
HD to verify that all these critical docs etc on my desktop were now
safely
backed up. I opened several docs and everything seemed to be working
fine.

4 Days Later:

I have since then upgraded from notebook from XP to Vista and now after
copying
my desktop docs and folders from the back up drive onto my laptop with
Vista
they seem to be pointing to nowhere. Suddenly I'm completely baffled and
in
shock (did i mention freaking out?) When i try opening any of those
desktop
docs I get the error message:
"the network connection or drive that your shortcut refers to is
unavailable..." SHORTCUT? I DIDNT KNOW THESE WERE SHORTCUTS! These are
critical docs and am not sure what to do...

Somehow you seem to have carefully backed up the shortcuts to your precious
documents without actually backing up the documents themselves. Quite why
this has happened is not clear as the "My Documents" folder in Windows XP
should hold the documents themselves.

You may be a little relieved to hear that the one feature of Vista that
reportedly does work well is its uninstall feature. This works by
squirreling all the Wndows XP files into a backup folder somewhere on your
hard drive. This means that they are still on your hard drive (though I'm
not sure if they are in an accessible format). At the very worst you can
always do yourself a favour and actually unistall Vista and revert to the
superior XP operating system. This should restore your documents.

What possessed you to downgrade to Vista in the first place?

 

[MILK MAN]

Well that's a little bit of positive news. Thanks for your advice. What if
the notebook was having problems before installing Vista and so they decided
to wipe the drives clean? Is it correct to assume that then those precious
files are lost forever?

Thanks again for your help.

 

[M.I.5¾]

Well that's a little bit of positive news. Thanks for your advice. What
if
the notebook was having problems before installing Vista and so they
decided
to wipe the drives clean? Is it correct to assume that then those
precious
files are lost forever?

Most probably. They may be present on a part of the disk that wasn't
overwtitten by Vista. There are utilities that can search a disk looking
for files and allow you to recover them. Most will allow you to run them
for free to see if such files can be found, but money has to change hands
before they will actually recover them.