Lost Files During System Restore

[Brian]

Hi There.

Wondered if you could advise.

I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus and even my spy checker
etc, couldn’t get rid off.
So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the
week as I knew I didn’t buy some internet time till the
Wednesday, ( waiting to get BB installed and have a network card at present
so buying air time now and again when needed till then ).
But when doing the restore I suddenly Then realised I may lose the pictures,
so after restore, the picture loss from My Documents folder were confirmed.

I then undid the restore point to the present day. But still no pictures!
Surely the pictures must be there somewhere.

Unfortunately, I deleted the pictures from original memory card once I had
downloaded them onto PC.

Was advised to use this, but I have no connection at the moment
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Any ideas would be appreciated. .

Ps..using Windows XP.

 

[TaurArian]

SR didn't delete the photos "System Restore does not monitor any user/personal data
files."
System Restore FAQ:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/faqsrwxp.mspx

--
====================================
TaurArian [MVP] 2005-2008 - Australia
====================================
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
http://taurarian.mvps.org/index.htm
Emails will not be acknowledged - please post to the newsgroup so all may benefit.


| Hi There.
|
| Wondered if you could advise.
|
| I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
| On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus and even my spy checker
| etc, couldn't get rid off.
| So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the
| week as I knew I didn't buy some internet time till the
| Wednesday, ( waiting to get BB installed and have a network card at present
| so buying air time now and again when needed till then ).
| But when doing the restore I suddenly Then realised I may lose the pictures,
| so after restore, the picture loss from My Documents folder were confirmed.
|
| I then undid the restore point to the present day. But still no pictures!
| Surely the pictures must be there somewhere.
|
| Unfortunately, I deleted the pictures from original memory card once I had
| downloaded them onto PC.
|
| Was advised to use this, but I have no connection at the moment
| http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
|
| Any ideas would be appreciated. .
|
| Ps..using Windows XP.
|
|

 

[Brian]

Hi there, could you perhaps explain why the pictures are no longer in their
folder in documents? after i did the restore then undid restore the pitcure
are no where to be seen.

 

[philo]

Hi there, could you perhaps explain why the pictures are no longer in their
folder in documents? after i did the restore then undid restore the pitcure
are no where to be seen.

The advice you were given was correct. System restore does not delete your
personal data.

Possibly the malware did it.

Stop using the machine at once
and try some data recovery software

 

[Plato]

I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus and even my spy checker
etc, couldn’t get rid off.

Spy Checkers dont address Trojans.

So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the
week as I knew I didn’t buy some internet time till the

Restore points only restore a previous registry. It does NOT restore ANY
files lost due to virus/malware damage.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi There.

Wondered if you could advise.

I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus

There's no such thing as a "Trojan virus." They are two different
things, and what you had was either a trojan horse or a virus.

Which was it, a trojan horse or a virus? What was its name? How did
you know you had it?

and even my spy checker
etc, couldn’t get rid off.

I don't what you mean by "etc," but anti-spyware programs are
generally not effective against either trojan horses or viruses. You
need anti-virus software to get rid of these.

So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the

System Restore is not a tool for getting rid of trojan horses or
viruses. If you were previously infected, you undoubtedly still are.

week as I knew I didn’t buy some internet time till the
Wednesday, ( waiting to get BB installed and have a network card at present
so buying air time now and again when needed till then ).
But when doing the restore I suddenly Then realised I may lose the pictures,
so after restore, the picture loss from My Documents folder were confirmed.

System Restore did not cause the loss of anything in the My Documents
folder. Whatever caused their loss, that wasn't it.

I then undid the restore point to the present day. But still no pictures!

No surprise there. As I said, System Restore has no effect on My
Documents.

Surely the pictures must be there somewhere.

Why do you think that? From the little you've told us, I don't know
what happened, but there is certainly a good possibility that they are
gone.

Unfortunately, I deleted the pictures from original memory card once I had
downloaded them onto PC.

Was advised to use this, but I have no connection at the moment
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Restoration is an excellent program (one of many similar ones). Its
purpose is to recover files that have been deleted. But it only works
if the space they occupied has not yet been reused. And it can only
help if the files have been deleted.

Here's my standard message on recovering accidentally deleted files
(pay particular attention to the sentence "Stop using the computer in
question immediately"):

"Deleting" a file doesn't actually delete it; it just marks the space
as available to be used. There are third-party programs that can
sometimes recover deleted files. The problem is that the space used by
the file is likely to become overwritten very quickly, and this makes
the file unrecoverable.

So your chances of successfully recovering this file are decent if you
try recovering it immediately after deleting it, and rapidly go
downhill from there. If you've been using the computer since then (for
example to write this question and read this answer), your chances are
probably very poor by now.

But if the file is important enough, it's worth a try anyway. Stop
using the computer in question immediately, if you haven't done so
already. Download an undelete program (here's one:
http://www3.telus.net/mikebike/RESTORATION.html but there are several
others to choose from; do a Google search) on a friend's computer and
bring it to yours on a floppy to try.

One additional point: have you checked the Recycle bin?

 

[Gerry]

Ken for Brian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)


--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Twayne]

SR didn't delete the photos "System Restore does not monitor any
user/personal data files."
System Restore FAQ:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/newsgroups/faqsrwxp.mspx

True: Assuming he's referring to the XP Restore feature. He used the
word "point" at one time, making me wonder if he was talking about a
backup app. I do suspect he meant system restore though.

OP:
In general: ALWAYS have multiple copies of ALL important data! Never
allow important files to exist in only one place; it's a recipe for
certain disaster.

Try searching My Computer for one of the lost filenames and see if it
finds it. It might, if it's just "lost". Next, try a chkdsk on the
drive that holds the pics. If that fails, then they're gone for good,
IMO.

I doubt Restore was the reason the pics were lost; it's much more likely
the virus/whatever did that. Be sure you get the machine cleaned up.

HTH

Twayne

 

[Debbie]

Hi There.

Wondered if you could advise.

I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus and even my spy checker
etc, couldn’t get rid off.
So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the
week as I knew I didn’t buy some internet time till the
Wednesday, ( waiting to get BB installed and have a network card at present
so buying air time now and again when needed till then ).
But when doing the restore I suddenly Then realised I may lose the pictures,
so after restore, the picture loss from My Documents folder were confirmed.

I then undid the restore point to the present day. But still no pictures!
Surely the pictures must be there somewhere.

Unfortunately, I deleted the pictures from original memory card once I had
downloaded them onto PC.

Was advised to use this, but I have no connection at the moment
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Any ideas would be appreciated. .

Ps..using Windows XP.

 

[Debbie]

Hi, The same thing just happened to me. I somehow lost all of my "favorites"
from the internet. After I did a system restore I noticed my pictures were
gone. Here is what I have found so far. I clicked on start, search, then on
"pictures" in the tool bar. In the search box I just typed . that is
just a period, and ...... there are all my pictures. I seem to be able to
drag them back to my files (which are still there) but the pictures are not
showing up in Windows Photo Gallery.

 

[Gerry]

Debbie

Blaming System Restore is not the answer! Are you using Disk CleanUp or
some other cleaner like cCleaner? Are you using any data back up
software like Norton Ghost or Acronis?

--



Hope this helps.

Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[Sergey Wasilenkow]

Wondered if you could advise.

I put a load of Pictures on home pc on over the weekend.
On Sunday I noticed I had some weird Trojan virus and even my spy checker
etc, couldn't get rid off.
So did a restore point from a few days ago starting from earlier on in the
week as I knew I didn't buy some internet time till the
Wednesday, ( waiting to get BB installed and have a network card at present
so buying air time now and again when needed till then ).
But when doing the restore I suddenly Then realised I may lose the pictures,
so after restore, the picture loss from My Documents folder were confirmed.

I then undid the restore point to the present day. But still no pictures!
Surely the pictures must be there somewhere.

Unfortunately, Ideletedthe pictures from original memory card once I had
downloaded them onto PC.

Was advised to use this, but I have no connection at the momenthttp://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Any ideas would be appreciated. .

Ps..using Windows XP.

You can also try to locate and recover your pictures using Easy
Digital Photo Recovery:

http://www.munsoft.com/EasyDigitalPhotoRecovery/

They can be found and recovered even if their location and size is not
stored in the file system structures.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Spy Checkers dont address Trojans.


Restore points only restore a previous registry. It does NOT restore ANY
files lost due to virus/malware damage.

Performing a restore will restore all monitored file types and most of the
registry.

In the restore process, what's restored and what's not!
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/tips.html#19


Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.net