missing My Documents files

I just discovered that all of the documents from a couple of years back until May 1 of this year in the My Documents folder have inexplicably disappeared. I haven't had a crash. I am running Norton Anti Virus Autoprotect. My email folders are all complete. The only thing I did a couple of weeks ago was add 512 MB of Ram to 256 already there. I am running Windows XP Home Edition on a Dell Dimension computer with plenty of free space. I have tried System Restore going back several weeks but haven't found the missing files. I checked the Recycle Bin - there is nothing there. Anybody have any thoughts what could have happened?

 

2 possibilities -
1- maybe you have given My Documents a "hidden" attribute?

2- from the following URL
http://www.tweakxp.com/display.asp?id=21

Display 'My Documents' on the desktop

The My Documents folder is one of the most used portions of windows. To place your documents folder back on the desktop follow the directions below.

Start Regedit.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\HideDesktopIcons\NewStartPanel
Once there, locate {450D8FBA-AD25-11D0-98A8-0800361B1103} in the list on the right.
Right click on it and select Modify
Change the value equal to 0
Reboot your computer

 

I tried these but they did not help. Thanks, though, for pointing me to Tweaksxp.com! Nice site.

 

hbreder

Is your My Documents folder very large. I can't remeber now but it may come to me, but seems I once heard something about this problem related to the size of rhe My documents folder. I do know that the My documents folder is treated differently and if it get too large on some OS versions it will slow the system down.

Try moving all that you can see to another folder, then recheck the original My Documents folder to see if more now show up! If not then move them back.

Additionally try to find a name of a file that you are sure existed in the missing files and do a disk search for it. They may be in another location.

Mike