Vista lost my August pictures

[Paul H]

I've been using Vista Home Premium on my new laptop for a few months. I had
a video problem, so I removed my hard disk, then sent the laptop in for
warranty repair. I got it back and put my hard disk back in. I discovered
my August digital pictures were missing. My August 2007 folder and it's
sub-folders were gone. Some were in the Recycle bin. I restored what I
saw, and most of them are now completely gone. Where did they restore to?
I'm willing to struggle with Vista problems, but if I can't trust it to not
lose files??? I know - back my files up every day. Yeah, right, I have
nothing better to do than baby sit backups. I do one every week, and copy
vital WP files every day. Also, it says I have no restore files. I know I
had at least a few, because I've used them to recover from problems. TIA,
Paul

 

[Daniel]

There is no way "Vista" could have deleted your files, someone has got to
the Laptop and done something silly,
do a full search of the hard drive, they are probably there somewhere.
So basically I cannot help with the missing files but backups are not so
difficult if you have a good program.
Casper 4 will do a backup to an external USB drive on a schedule then close
the machine down, if you want.
or you can do a backup on demand at the end of the day, then, if you set it
up that way, the machine will close down after the backup is finished.

I use Casper and it is brilliant.

Cheers

Daniel

 

[Paul H]

I've done full searches of both C: and D: - my computer had the disk split
onto 2 drives - I hate it!!! I had a Sony Vaio laptop that came that way,
and now my Acer laptop. Many inconveniences!

I need some program that searches the surface for fragments of missing
files. And, yes, Vista did it - no one but me had any physical access to my
drive.

There is no way "Vista" could have deleted your files, someone has got to
the Laptop and done something silly,
do a full search of the hard drive, they are probably there somewhere.
So basically I cannot help with the missing files but backups are not so
difficult if you have a good program.
Casper 4 will do a backup to an external USB drive on a schedule then close
the machine down, if you want.
or you can do a backup on demand at the end of the day, then, if you set it
up that way, the machine will close down after the backup is finished.

I use Casper and it is brilliant.

Cheers

Daniel

 

[Spanky deMonkey]

Well, if you were the only one who had physical access to your hard drive,
then YOU did it. Vista doesn't just delete pictures for the HELL of it.
Maybe you should do a full search of your hard drive for the pictures. They
could be in another folder.

But next time, back up your data. You said you do that once a week. What
happens if your hard drive crashes in the middle of the week? Do you want
to risk losing pictures? Your call

 

[noaim]

spanky you seriously dont think vista could have glitched on him? Seriously
what are you smoking.

 

[Rich]

spanky you seriously dont think vista could have glitched on him?

Seriously what are you smoking.

.. why blame yourself when you can pin it on MS

Me, my computer, files are gone .. Vista did it! .. heh

that's the latest generations best and brightest way of dealing with
adversity ....

"not me .. no way"

Rich

 

[Peter Foldes]

Norton or Mcafee installed by any chance ??/

 

[Paul H]

Nope. I use Avast, and scan for viruses frequently, as well as Ad-Aware for
spyware. I wonder where my restore files went... Do these people think I
deleted them, so I could blame Vista? I don't know if other files are
missing. I just know my digital pictures are not where I left them.


Norton or Mcafee installed by any chance ??/

 

[David A. Spicer]

LOL I seriously believe that if someone's problem was no AC/DC power, they
would still get asked this question

 

[Guest]

Vista does not, in and of itself, delete files from your hard drive without
specific instructions to do so. You may have inadvertantly deleted the
folder.If Vista deleted the folder, why did it not delete the folders for the
other months also?

The problem could very well be malware installed on your computer, but then
again, it probably would have deleted more than the month of August.

Did you try to defrag your computer at the same time you loaded or viewed
the August folder? Did you change the name of the folder or the path to the
folder? Did you delete an icon for the folder thinking the icon was a
shortcut when in fact it was for the folder itself?

What application do you use to view these digital pictures? It is possible
you have a copy of the folder or files in this application. Media
applications will usually search for and copy any and all videos and photos
found on your computer. You could try looking there for copies of your
missing files.

Something, for some reason, has deleted your August 2007 folder. I am not
saying you are the responsible party. However, something has caused it to be
deleted and it was not your Vista OS.

Where did the pictures come from? Did you delete them from your camera or
flash drive after copying them to Vista?

In any event, if the pictures were all that important to you why didn't you
do an immediate backup of them after you downloaded them to your computer? To
download something important and then depend upon a weekly backup is pure
folly. You said you did not wish to "babysit" a backup every time you save
something. The problem you are now facing seems to be much worse than
"babysitting" a backup, which would have only taken you a few minutes to do.
Find something else to do while you are waiting on the backup. I assume your
computer is capable of running more than one application at the same time.

I don't know why you are worried about not having any restore points. Doing
a system restore is not going to recover deleted picture files. If the
pictures are that important to you the thing to do is immediately stop using
your computer and purchase some recovery software. This may or may not find
your files. They could be overwritten by now.

The main thing is this: if the pictures are gone they are gone and there is
nothing you can do about it. You have learned a valuable lesson about backing
up important files. Don't continue to rant and rave and blame the operating
system. There is no need to blame anyone or anything but yourself. You should
accept responsibility for not having your August 2007 digital pictures,
regardless of the situation that caused the deletion.

Have a nice day.

C.B.

 

[Paul H]

You gloss over the fact that my restore files disappeared. I had a few, and
had used a couple of them them. I absolutely did not delete all of my
restore points. Of course I know that they would not restore data. My
pictures were of little value - if they had been, I would have copied them
to another computer, as I do any WP files or other files that I care about.
So... no restore points - a mystery that my hard disk, Vista, and my CPU
conspired to worry me. I'll do a thorough check of the disk to see if
errors are occurring.


Vista does not, in and of itself, delete files from your hard drive without
specific instructions to do so. You may have inadvertantly deleted the
folder.If Vista deleted the folder, why did it not delete the folders for
the
other months also?

The problem could very well be malware installed on your computer, but then
again, it probably would have deleted more than the month of August.

Did you try to defrag your computer at the same time you loaded or viewed
the August folder? Did you change the name of the folder or the path to the
folder? Did you delete an icon for the folder thinking the icon was a
shortcut when in fact it was for the folder itself?

What application do you use to view these digital pictures? It is possible
you have a copy of the folder or files in this application. Media
applications will usually search for and copy any and all videos and photos
found on your computer. You could try looking there for copies of your
missing files.

Something, for some reason, has deleted your August 2007 folder. I am not
saying you are the responsible party. However, something has caused it to be
deleted and it was not your Vista OS.

Where did the pictures come from? Did you delete them from your camera or
flash drive after copying them to Vista?

In any event, if the pictures were all that important to you why didn't you
do an immediate backup of them after you downloaded them to your computer?
To
download something important and then depend upon a weekly backup is pure
folly. You said you did not wish to "babysit" a backup every time you save
something. The problem you are now facing seems to be much worse than
"babysitting" a backup, which would have only taken you a few minutes to do.
Find something else to do while you are waiting on the backup. I assume your
computer is capable of running more than one application at the same time.

I don't know why you are worried about not having any restore points. Doing
a system restore is not going to recover deleted picture files. If the
pictures are that important to you the thing to do is immediately stop using
your computer and purchase some recovery software. This may or may not find
your files. They could be overwritten by now.

The main thing is this: if the pictures are gone they are gone and there is
nothing you can do about it. You have learned a valuable lesson about
backing
up important files. Don't continue to rant and rave and blame the operating
system. There is no need to blame anyone or anything but yourself. You
should
accept responsibility for not having your August 2007 digital pictures,
regardless of the situation that caused the deletion.

Have a nice day.

C.B.

 

[DevilsPGD]

In message <[email protected]> "Paul H"

You gloss over the fact that my restore files disappeared. I had a few, and
had used a couple of them them. I absolutely did not delete all of my
restore points. Of course I know that they would not restore data. My
pictures were of little value - if they had been, I would have copied them
to another computer, as I do any WP files or other files that I care about.
So... no restore points - a mystery that my hard disk, Vista, and my CPU
conspired to worry me. I'll do a thorough check of the disk to see if
errors are occurring.

Depending on which version of Vista you had, the restore points could
have restored your files. Alas, not on Vista Home Premium.

That being said, due to the way restore points are implemented, any sort
of disk corruption at all can cause them to be lost. This isn't really
a bad thing, if your hardware is corrupting data you shouldn't expect
software to pick up the slack anyway.

 

[Paul H]

I did scan my hard disk last nite - no problems found. As I mentioned in my
original post, some of the Aug 2007 sub-folders that are now missing were in
the recycle bin, so I restored them. They then completely disappeared. If
I had known that was going to happen, I would have left them there and tried
to retrieve the contents of the recycled folders. My disk is not even 1/3
full, so things stay in the recycle bin until I get rid of them. I have not
done that recently. So... Can I trust Vista, or should I put XP Pro on this
computer, like on my other 4 computers, that are all networked together -
Ethernet, not wireless. I back up critical files by copying them to another
computer.

In message <[email protected]> "Paul H"

You gloss over the fact that my restore files disappeared. I had a few,
and
had used a couple of them them. I absolutely did not delete all of my
restore points. Of course I know that they would not restore data. My
pictures were of little value - if they had been, I would have copied them
to another computer, as I do any WP files or other files that I care about.
So... no restore points - a mystery that my hard disk, Vista, and my CPU
conspired to worry me. I'll do a thorough check of the disk to see if
errors are occurring.

Depending on which version of Vista you had, the restore points could
have restored your files. Alas, not on Vista Home Premium.

That being said, due to the way restore points are implemented, any sort
of disk corruption at all can cause them to be lost. This isn't really
a bad thing, if your hardware is corrupting data you shouldn't expect
software to pick up the slack anyway.