Tech Disappearing files and folders (Read 279 times)

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Hi fellas. I was wondering if someone smarter than I could shed some light on this weird problem I've encountered.

Basically, a bunch of files have just been disappearing from my computer. I first noticed it last night when I was looking for a word document and couldn't find it. I was certain I'd saved it in a sub-folder in My Documents, but the sub-folder seemed to be missing too. A search proved unfruitful. This morning, I noticed another sub-folder, this one containing music files, was missing. Then, in My Pictures, I noticed a folder containing about 3 or 4 years worth of photos was gone too. So I started to get a bit panicky. I ran a virus check twice and nothing came up. I googled "disappearing files" and stuff, nothing of any help came up. So I downloaded a program called Free Undelete, and upon scanning my C Drive, found a whole bunch of files that had been removed. Some of them, I had deleted myself ages ago. Others I had not noticed were gone, but definitely had not deleted them. Upon searching round a bit more, I found loads and loads of folders with names like "$$folder_7909" containing all my photos and the word documents I'd originally been looking for, plus my entire folder of university work and other shit I hadn't realised was gone. So I've recovered all that, though not all of it works now.

Basically, what the fuck? Like I said I ran 2 virus checks that came up with nothing. All the files were deleted on 01.01.1601 at 1:00...which is odd. I did remove a few programs yesterday, but only some ones that I'd never ever really used, nothing major. That's all I can think of.

Anyone know why my files have been disappearing or how I can remedy this? Cause it sucks a bit. :(

thanks

(ps. i'm thick at computers i think you'll find)
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Man, your files were deleted in 1601 AD?  That's pretty crazy.  Also, sounds like your hard drive might be failing though that's my only guess.

I'll let Jeff solve this one.

Here, try running this and see what it says. Screenshot the main window and paste it here.
Last Edit: September 06, 2008, 07:21:10 pm by Izekeal
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hard drive failing would not cause files to disappear, it would just corrupt the filesystem.
It sounds like you have a virus, or something is remotely connecting and messing with you.
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someone stole your PC, went to the past, and then deleted it.
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probably rules out hard drive failing then? It doesn't seem to have happened since. So, if it's a virus, but my virus scanner isn't picking up the virus, how does one go about dealing with that?
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i did it, i hacked you
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I'm not good with computers either :(​.
All I can suggest is that you see if there were any strange filenames when you found all of your missing files.
Or, see if there are any files there that you have never had.
That's all I can think of :P.
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