Lost "My Music" & "My Pictures"..crash?!?Computer working though!

[mopargirl]

Windows XP with both service packs. Ad-aware & Spybot. McAfee virusware.
Started computer this AM. My background (behind icons) was gone, it was all blue. Some icons were also gone: shortcut to IE, verizon online among the few. The previous background was my kids pictures. It was then that I noticed My Pictures & My Music options were gone. It was like Windows got reinstalled or something. All other files are okay. But the music files are no where to be found. Some of my photos are still saved under the microsoft picture publishing file. I tried different dates of restore. It either did not allow me to restore or it did restore without recovery of these files. THere is no indication of a crash or error warnings etc. Friday night it worked fine. Saturday morning..gone. Is there anything to be done to recover these files?
There was tons of music. HELP!!

[Rainbow32]

Did you try looking for My Pictures and My Music by right clicking My computer>Explore>Expand the C drive>Doucments and Settings>Clicking on your user name>My documents?

[mopargirl]

Yes, I did that. It's not there. ONly the option, sample music.

[911enahs]

Hello mopargirl heres an idea goto my computer click the search tab>check the box that says pictures music, or video> then select music> then under all or part of the file name put in *.* then hit search and you can do the same with your pictures give that a try good luck to ya

[oracle128]

It sounds like your profile has become corrupt, and Windows is using a temporary default one, which would explain the loss of wallpaper, and the files seemingly missing (it's using a new, empty My Documents folder). Your files should still be intact in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents. I would transfer them to somewhere else on the drive, like C:\Music and C:\Pictures (you'll need to make those folders). Also, if you have anything else under My Documents you wish to save, do the same, transfer it to a folder on the root C drive.

Go to Control Panel->Users Accounts, delete your old user account and create a new one. You can then transfer your files back if you want. You will need to redo all your display settings, folder options etc.

[Rich M]

Oracle as usual right on....when done I would also run online spyware and virus scans which are far superior for this kind of thing and if nothing there, you maye have the begiiinigs of hardware problems unfortunately such as weakening hard drive.
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/#

http://www.ewido.net/en/

[mopargirl]

Okay, thank you one & all, but...I tried these options. Under the Documents & Settings, under owner, under my documents, under my music is again...only the file sample music. I tried doing the search that 911enahs recommended. I got over 20000 files, but none of our music files. I mean is seems logical that they did not simply disappear, but I find it odd that I don't have any other signs of windows malfunction other than missing music & photo files. Could there have been an error on the windows media player?
Also, I did a search for media under windows media player. None of the music came up. Any more ideas? Thanks a million times over..again.

[Rainbow32]

There is something called the limewire virus which supposely was attached to some music downloads and would delete all music files found on a user's computer. This was rumored to have been done by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). But then again you said your pictures are missing also. Do the virus/malware scans and see what comes up.

[Seth_]

What accounts show up in "User Accounts" from control Panel?

Try logging in to each and see if that helped.

[thewizkid07]

Originally Posted by oracle128

It sounds like your profile has become corrupt, and Windows is using a temporary default one, which would explain the loss of wallpaper, and the files seemingly missing (it's using a new, empty My Documents folder). Your files should still be intact in C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents. I would transfer them to somewhere else on the drive, like C:\Music and C:\Pictures (you'll need to make those folders). Also, if you have anything else under My Documents you wish to save, do the same, transfer it to a folder on the root C drive.

Go to Control Panel->Users Accounts, delete your old user account and create a new one. You can then transfer your files back if you want. You will need to redo all your display settings, folder options etc.

Hey thanks man!!. Its seems like you know exactly what happen , about lossing wallpapers etc. Would doing what you say help me to correct my cant download problems any more?

[Manc]

Right, what I'm about to suggest is probably a long shot, but here goes...

First of all, not so much a suggeston but more agreement with a previous one, I can't help thinking Oracle could be onto something with what he's said. It's typical behaviour for when default settings are restored. I don't have sufficient knowledge to inform you as to how to recover them if this has happened, but it may spark another user here to offer a possible idea or solution. It's sounds very feasible, let's put it that way.

Secondly, disk usage. If there was tons of music (would help to know how much), then a noticeable amount of disk space would be used. Now, this is the tricky bit, were you actually looking at that prior to this happening, do you remember roughly how much it was if you were? Is there a noticeable difference now? If there is, chances are they're gone.

Third, to double check something. Perhaps, and it's a big perhaps, the folders have become hidden or hidden themselves. I've only known this to happen once, and it certainly wasn't because I'd hid them, so another long shot. Anyway, go to Control panel, select Folder Options, and then View. You'll see down that list an option for Hidden Files and Folders, select the option to show them and click Apply. Remember to reset this back once you've checked. Now go back and check whether there's anything in there. If, by stroke of luck, they have become hidden and you now see them, right click the containing folders and you'll see the option to uncheck 'hidden'. Click apply. Who knows? Like I said, long shots. I wasn't sure that Windows would let you hide those folders but I just checked, and it does. So there's nothing special about them in that respect.

And last of all and if all the above fails, you could try putting the disk in another machine, taking ownership of the folders in question and looking to see if they show up there. If they don't, I'm afraid they're probably gone.


If it turns out they are gone or have been deleted, then I really feel for you because if I lost my music I'd be gutted. I know it's a bit after the fact (however who knows, you may find it useful to know for the future), but valuable stuff like music and pictures of family and such should really be backed up onto a second hard drive. USB 2.0 drives and enclosures are handy for this and are quite easy to hook up. You don't need to open the PC, you just plug them in.

I know that doesn't help now, but if you find these files, or when you next build up a collection of valuable files, you'll think much more about that than most people, and will therefore be more capable of preventing it happening.

Good luck, I really hope you find a solution to this.

[oracle128]

Original thread here.

Originally Posted by thewizkid07

Hey thanks man!!. Its seems like you know exactly what happen , about lossing wallpapers etc. Would doing what you say help me to correct my cant download problems any more?

Maybe, it depends on what exactly is stopping the downloads, what happens when you try to download (error messages?), etc. But before trying to troubleshoot that, get yourself a working user account and see if downloading works again.