Lost My Pictures

[BILLY-THE-FISH]

Hi,
I wonder if anyone has a solution to my problem... I logged on today to find all (well most of them) my pictures have gone from the My Pictures folder, weird thing is that a small number of them are there and all the folders are there but nothing inside them ... if I do a Properties check on the folder it shows still a massive 4GB inside it including 1,000 files and so many folders etc. as if they are still there. There are a few in my recycle bin but not many... I did not put them there!!
I was just about to back them up .. I know I know big mistake .

Anyone know if there is a way to get my pictures back? Why did this happen?

Thanks in advance

[anon]

if I do a Properties check on the folder it shows still a massive 4GB inside it including 1,000 files and so many folders etc. as if they are still there.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/u...ddenfiles.mspx

Perhaps someone used your computer and hid them?

[BILLY-THE-FISH]

Yes tried that.. and no one has used it but thanks

[100%]

Try http://www.piriform.com/recuva
there are other more precise programs, but the latter should help.
Enjoy

Edit: do as little as possible with your pc until you recover the files. Everything you do overwrites history.

[BILLY-THE-FISH]

Thanks I'll give it a try... have tried everything else I can think of, I've tried system restore and Diskchk etc. and still no pics .

[anon]

Try http://www.piriform.com/recuva

I was going to suggest that, but he said going to Properties says the folder is just as "heavy" as it was before the pictures were gone, and that made me doubt a bit. Anyway, it may be worth a try.

[BILLY-THE-FISH]

Tried that and it found no .jpg's I think I am resigned to have lost them

[Renzokuken-]

I've been in your situation and I used Advanved Photo Recovery. It recovered most of my pictures. But some of them were corrupt/broken.
Good luck.

[nye]

I have a really tough time believing you would have lost actual data if the folder is reading the same size. If anything, corrupted. Try some disk recovery software. I don't believe you would even want to use System Restore in this type of scenario.

[stan]

Given the fact that the more you try in Windows the greater the risk of overwriting the files. The first thing I would do is image the drive to an external drive with a boot disc. At least then you would have a copy of it to keep trying different things on. You may even be lucky and it is just a Windows thing and the pictures may be there in a non-windows enviroment.