critical folder disappeared

I run Win98se on a 1.2 gig Athelon machine with 512 mg of ram. a critical folder just disappeared last night. It contains two years of correspondence and a complete book I wrote! It is critical that I find this folder!!! I have looked in the trash can under Windows Explorer and looked in the "find files or folders" and the folder's not there. Everything else on my machine seems to be working just fine. I've been using computers for years and never had anything like this happen. This is a serious emergency for me and I'd certainly appreciate some help. Only possible clues I have are that for the last two or three days when moving from folder to folder my machine would take 30 seconds or more to move from one folder to another or to open a folder. And that I have about 25,000 files or images on my machine, if there's some upper limit to how many folders or files you can have under Win98se. Also I do download a lot of stuff from Kazaa Lite, but have McCaffee virus protection and its firewall, which I downloaded from Kazaa Lite. Please help, thanks.

 

Phew!

Dave I hope you had a backup.

If the folder is deleted then it may be recoverable.

For sure every write to disk of new files decreases your chances of recovery so do not create files or DEFRAGMENT for now.

You have not deframented since this have you?

Two things you said struck my military mind.

1. it was not in recycle bin
do you empty this often, especially right before this happened?

2. Slow access to the folder.

This may mean you have a disk error.

Reboot to safe mode (IMPORTANT).

Run scandisk in surface scan mode uncheck fix automaticly so it will prompt you for what to do if it finds something. This could take awhile!

If it finds something and you do not know what to answer then leave it and get back to us somehow.

Unless you have a second computer close this may be hard.

Due to the fact of the appearent importance of these files you may want to send me a personal direct email (click email at top of message) then I will reply with my phone number to try to talk you thru this. If you do this then only call when the scandisk stops for confirmation.

Mike

 

OK Dave

Per our phone conversation.

Print this out so you will have it while in safe mode.

Hope the Safe Mode scandisk completed successfully.

Here are the cleanups you wanted to do. Since you have had these problems recently and have been doing hardly anything for quite sometime as far as cleanup goes these will catch you up to date.

Note: This is a drastic shotgun deep cleanup.

This should cleanup about everything.

Do these in the same order presented.

BUT DO NONE OF THESE UNTILL YOUR FILES AND FOLDERS ARE RESTORED AND BACKED UP!

First download and install but do not run these programs. (Will be done in safe mode).

Spyware and adware removal
http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download


http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Registry and System cleaners Do not run duplicate files in any of these!


RegCleaner http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml


EasyClean1.7 http://gswi.com/downloads.htm

At this time update Virus scanner online but do not run.


Now that all above are installed we begin keep the order below:

1. boot to f8 boot menu chose command prompt only
then type
a. del c:\*.swp (may get file not found message) is ok!
b. del c:\windows\*.swp
c. deltree c:\windows\temp\*.*
d. attrib c:\windows\shelli*.* -s -h -r
e. del c:\windows\shelli*.*

Reboot do not allow full mode so hit f8 and select safe mode.

Some basic prep.

Go to add/remove and remove any useless programs you do not and will not ever use. If it has to reboot for any of these do not let back to full mode but f8 and back to safe mode.

Now the steps.

1. Adaware. In Adaware click my computer to select everything then uncheck floppy a: and CD! What ever it finds check and remove.

2. Spybot. Run twice select and delete everything it finds. After 2nd run leave everything that is left.

3. EasyClean run Start menu, Uunnessesary files and Registry cleaner. Remove all found. On the start menu cleaner hit the + and delete the bad entries but leave anything it complains about. Do not do duplicate files.

4.RegCleaner In RegCleaner look thru the first screen in first 2 columns for programs that you think you have installed and should not be on your computer, tag and delete. Leave anything you are not sure of.

Then go to tools-registry cleanup-do them all. Select and remove all!

4. Reboot no full mode f8 to safe mode

5. run Virus scan in deepest mode check setting to check all drive and files

6. defrag the drive

7. reboot you are finished.

Mike

Note: to anyone else reading this. Parts of this proceedure applies to Win95 98 ME.

If you wish to run this for XP or Win2k leave off the boot to dos section. The rest will work for XP and Win2K.

 

Dave

One additional item you can do if you want.

Download unzip and run StartUpList

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/startuplist.zip

It will produce a wordpad list of all your starups. Copy and paste back in a post. I can then advise you on these.

Mike

 

Thanks, Mike for all your help in finding my mysteriously lost folder. As you suggested I'm posting roughly what was done and how it solved the problem:

When I went to full scandisk in the "safe" mode with "fix automatically" unchecked I found several "file name too long" errors. This was because my very important missing folder was nested 8 or 9 layers deep. Apparently with Win98se you cannot have a file name and path to the file totalling over 259 characters long. A few of my file names that had been downloaded from the internet were very long, and when you added all the characters necessary to describe a path many folders deep to the files it totalled over 259 characters. As you told me, I checked "fix" for each of these kinds of errors found by scandisk. I then let scandisk run overnight and finish. I think it took so long because I did not turn off my screensaver and virus protection program before I did the full scandisk from "safe" mode. But, sure enough, when scandisk had finished and I rebooted, there was my previously vanished file folder. Since that critical folder had two years of correspondence, a 1,500 person email list and a complete book I had written, I was understandibly thrilled to find it after it had "vanished." Thanks again.

Also, thanks for your other response through this group spelling out, in detail, how not just myself, but anyone, can clean up their operating system with free spyware and registery utilities.

 

Fantastc Dave!

Have you backed the recovered Folder up. If not do that now!

You have Spy/Aware or a virus! If you were in safe mode these things were not running!!!!!

That is why we chose safe mode to do this. Screen savers and Virus protection are not active in safe mode unless you have done something very unusual.

You almost for sure will find many not just 1 or 2 ad/spywares on your computer.

I highly advise you do the cleanups immediately. All from beginning to end except the defrag.

If this drive (the old drive c: (1st partition on 2nd drive) is empty now, these cleanups will not effect your chances of recovery. Just do not write (save or create a file on it) or defrag or scandisk it!

Follow the cleanup steps now! I thought you understood this when we spoke on the phone.

I saw the other message that should have stayed here in this thread. About the recovery of this drive. I will have a few recovery tools posted shortly.

Mike

 

Dave.....

Dave.............

Let me know something!

You have all the file recovery tools you need!

Mike