folder missing

[Casey Brown]

Hi. My dad is having a problem with his computer today, and I am not sure
how best to help him--I am hundreds of miles away. I was hoping that
someone out there might have some suggestions...

Evidently, he turned on his machine today and one directory is missing from
it--c:\stuff, let's say. They run WinME, I think. It was taking a long
time booting so he restarted it before it loaded. It loaded in safe mode,
then he shut down and loaded normally. I guess the desktop shortcuts to
c:\stuff didn't work, and he discovered that the directory itself is
missing.

I don't really know what to tell them, and I know these are vague details.
But what other information should I have him gather? They do go online and
were last night--they may have picked up a virus, but they tend to be very
careful about what files they download. I looked at some recent virus
definitions but didn't see anything that looked similar.

Any ideas? Where to go from here? People to contact that might be of help
to them? There were a fair number of documents and important (to them)
files, some of which were backed up but others that weren't.

Thanks in advance for your time!

-Casey

 

[Dave Patrick]

Better to ask WinME questions in a WinME group.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
Microsoft Certified Professional [Windows 2000]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect


:
| Hi. My dad is having a problem with his computer today, and I am not sure
| how best to help him--I am hundreds of miles away. I was hoping that
| someone out there might have some suggestions...
|
| Evidently, he turned on his machine today and one directory is missing
from
| it--c:\stuff, let's say. They run WinME, I think. It was taking a long
| time booting so he restarted it before it loaded. It loaded in safe mode,
| then he shut down and loaded normally. I guess the desktop shortcuts to
| c:\stuff didn't work, and he discovered that the directory itself is
| missing.
|
| I don't really know what to tell them, and I know these are vague details.
| But what other information should I have him gather? They do go online
and
| were last night--they may have picked up a virus, but they tend to be very
| careful about what files they download. I looked at some recent virus
| definitions but didn't see anything that looked similar.
|
| Any ideas? Where to go from here? People to contact that might be of
help
| to them? There were a fair number of documents and important (to them)
| files, some of which were backed up but others that weren't.
|
| Thanks in advance for your time!
|
| -Casey
|
|

 

[Gary]

Have you checked the recycle bin in case he accidentally deleted them?

Have you tried doing a search of the C: drive..or whatever drive for a
particular file that you know was in that folder? He may have dragged the
folder somewhere accidentally and the search would help you locate it.

Does he have a network? Is it possible the files were on a share on
another computer? And that computer may just be turned off right now?

Gary

 

[Casey Brown]

Thanks, Gary. I actually had him check all those things (well, he's not on
network). A search pulls up shortcuts that point to where the directory
used to be, but the directory itself is not to be found.

Dave--he may be running 2000, which is why i posted here. I'm not quite
sure. Either way, I think it is unlikely that the differences between ME
and 2000 would be what cause this problem.

Thanks!

-Casey

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

Hi. My dad is having a problem with his computer today, and I am not sure
how best to help him--I am hundreds of miles away. I was hoping that
someone out there might have some suggestions...

Evidently, he turned on his machine today and one directory is missing from
it--c:\stuff, let's say. They run WinME, I think. It was taking a long
time booting so he restarted it before it loaded. It loaded in safe mode,
then he shut down and loaded normally. I guess the desktop shortcuts to
c:\stuff didn't work, and he discovered that the directory itself is
missing.

I don't really know what to tell them, and I know these are vague details.
But what other information should I have him gather? They do go online and
were last night--they may have picked up a virus, but they tend to be very
careful about what files they download. I looked at some recent virus
definitions but didn't see anything that looked similar.

Any ideas? Where to go from here? People to contact that might be of help
to them? There were a fair number of documents and important (to them)
files, some of which were backed up but others that weren't.

Thanks in advance for your time!

-Casey

Sounds to me like he powered off the machine when it was initially
booting and the folder was corrupted (oh, the woes of FATxx). I'm sure
scandisk ran at the next reboot and if a folder is corrupted badly
enough, it can actually be turned into a file. My guess is the folder
and anything in it is lost, and my guess is he doesn't have a backup
either.

He could try a scandisk again and see if any FOUND* files are created,
but that's a long shot.

 

[Casey Brown]

Thank you, Ricardo.

What is a FOUND* file?

Sounds to me like he powered off the machine when it was initially
booting and the folder was corrupted (oh, the woes of FATxx). I'm sure
scandisk ran at the next reboot and if a folder is corrupted badly
enough, it can actually be turned into a file. My guess is the folder
and anything in it is lost, and my guess is he doesn't have a backup
either.

He could try a scandisk again and see if any FOUND* files are created,
but that's a long shot.

 

[Ricardo M. Urbano - W2K/NT4 MVP]

Thank you, Ricardo.

What is a FOUND* file?

When a file is written to a FATxx file system, it first writes the data
to the disk, then updates the FAT (NTx versions of FAT) or FAT's (non
NTx versions of FAT have redundant FAT's - NTx uses the redundant copy
to allow 4GB partitions). The FAT is essentially a table of contents
that tells the OS where the data for a given file is located on the
disk.

Since FAT doesn't use transactions (like NTFS...data is not "committed"
until it is written to the disk AND the MFT [the NTFS equivalent of the
FAT] is updated), if a data write operation is not completed either
because of power loss, a PC crash, or app crashes, you can end up w/
either lost clusters (data on the disk w/ no corresponding FAT entry) or
cross linked files (a situation where there are 2 or more entries in the
FAT for the same cluster - disk utils, like good ole Norton Utilities,
scandisk, etc. can inspect the FAT's and determine which file really
owns the cluster and correct the FAT).

When a disk util, like scandisk, runs and finds lost clusters
(essentially, orphaned data), it can try to reconstruct the entire file
as best as possible and save it as a FOUND* file. The naming convention
is essentially a FOUND* file for every file or partial file the utility
finds and reconstructs. The file name will also include numbers, which
are incremented for each file it finds.

9/10, the FOUND files are useless, but sometimes, an entire file will be
recovered in its entirety and, if so, consider yourself lucky.

If your father had serious file corruption, there is a good chance that
there are a lot of lost clusters, so, I suppose it's worth a shot to see
if anything important is recovered. The problem w/ found files is that
there is no indication of what type of file is recovered since, w/o FAT
information, there is no name, just data. So, you can end up trying to
open every FOUND* file w/ every app on your machine just to see if there
is anything useful in it.

 

[Casey Brown]

Thank you very much for the explanation, Ricardo. That is good information
to know.

Turns out that scandisk did the trick for him--thanks again!

-Casey

Thank you, Ricardo.

What is a FOUND* file?

not
sure missing
from online
and be
very of
help

When a file is written to a FATxx file system, it first writes the data
to the disk, then updates the FAT (NTx versions of FAT) or FAT's (non
NTx versions of FAT have redundant FAT's - NTx uses the redundant copy
to allow 4GB partitions). The FAT is essentially a table of contents
that tells the OS where the data for a given file is located on the
disk.

Since FAT doesn't use transactions (like NTFS...data is not "committed"
until it is written to the disk AND the MFT [the NTFS equivalent of the
FAT] is updated), if a data write operation is not completed either
because of power loss, a PC crash, or app crashes, you can end up w/
either lost clusters (data on the disk w/ no corresponding FAT entry) or
cross linked files (a situation where there are 2 or more entries in the
FAT for the same cluster - disk utils, like good ole Norton Utilities,
scandisk, etc. can inspect the FAT's and determine which file really
owns the cluster and correct the FAT).

When a disk util, like scandisk, runs and finds lost clusters
(essentially, orphaned data), it can try to reconstruct the entire file
as best as possible and save it as a FOUND* file. The naming convention
is essentially a FOUND* file for every file or partial file the utility
finds and reconstructs. The file name will also include numbers, which
are incremented for each file it finds.

9/10, the FOUND files are useless, but sometimes, an entire file will be
recovered in its entirety and, if so, consider yourself lucky.

If your father had serious file corruption, there is a good chance that
there are a lot of lost clusters, so, I suppose it's worth a shot to see
if anything important is recovered. The problem w/ found files is that
there is no indication of what type of file is recovered since, w/o FAT
information, there is no name, just data. So, you can end up trying to
open every FOUND* file w/ every app on your machine just to see if there
is anything useful in it.

 

[Brian Coats]

If you have or he has access to Norton erase wizard on disk. (One
you can run from the cd-like Norton system works). You might be able
to recovery some of these files, not all. It has saved me a couple of
times.

Thank you, Ricardo.

What is a FOUND* file?

When a file is written to a FATxx file system, it first writes the data
to the disk, then updates the FAT (NTx versions of FAT) or FAT's (non
NTx versions of FAT have redundant FAT's - NTx uses the redundant copy
to allow 4GB partitions). The FAT is essentially a table of contents
that tells the OS where the data for a given file is located on the
disk.

Since FAT doesn't use transactions (like NTFS...data is not "committed"
until it is written to the disk AND the MFT [the NTFS equivalent of the
FAT] is updated), if a data write operation is not completed either
because of power loss, a PC crash, or app crashes, you can end up w/
either lost clusters (data on the disk w/ no corresponding FAT entry) or
cross linked files (a situation where there are 2 or more entries in the
FAT for the same cluster - disk utils, like good ole Norton Utilities,
scandisk, etc. can inspect the FAT's and determine which file really
owns the cluster and correct the FAT).

When a disk util, like scandisk, runs and finds lost clusters
(essentially, orphaned data), it can try to reconstruct the entire file
as best as possible and save it as a FOUND* file. The naming convention
is essentially a FOUND* file for every file or partial file the utility
finds and reconstructs. The file name will also include numbers, which
are incremented for each file it finds.

9/10, the FOUND files are useless, but sometimes, an entire file will be
recovered in its entirety and, if so, consider yourself lucky.

If your father had serious file corruption, there is a good chance that
there are a lot of lost clusters, so, I suppose it's worth a shot to see
if anything important is recovered. The problem w/ found files is that
there is no indication of what type of file is recovered since, w/o FAT
information, there is no name, just data. So, you can end up trying to
open every FOUND* file w/ every app on your machine just to see if there
is anything useful in it.