System restore problems with XP and missing folders

[Luke_XR6]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone could offer some assistance with a little problem I encountered yesterday. I noticed that 8 folders in my My Pictures had been deleted (which was the entire content). Knowing that no one had had access to my computer, I tried to do a system restore. I selected a date 3 days prior, however, when windows loaded it said that It was unable to restore my system to this date. I have since tried 4 other dates over the past month and have received the same error message. I am using XP Home edition.

Any advice on how to system restore or to find my deleted folders would be greatly appreciated.

Jo and Luke

 

[PC eye]

Sounds like you need a Welcome to the Computer Forum! http://www.computerforum.com/70672-official-welcome-thread.html and the reminder to new members to reivew the http://www.computerforum.com/52038-forum-rules.html

At this point with restore points used you may want to try a data recovery tool if no sign of the deleted folder is found in the recycle bin. One software good for the verious versions of Windows is Active Undelete found at http://www.active-undelete.com/products.htm

Some freewares for Seagate and Maxtor drives are seen at http://www.salvationdata.com/data-recovery-freeware.htm

Other freewares for data recovery including NTFS type partitions are found at http://www.myfreewares.com/category-1201-data-recovery-free-download.html

This would be the first method in trying to see if you can recover the lost folder before performing a repair install of Windows in order to regain access to the files in it. For a great guide seen for repairing the current installation of Windows if it comes to that go to http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm