A couple weeks ago, my brother's system crashed (locked up) and when they rebooted (which seemed to happen normally), they noticed an abundance of files missing:
- All files in the "root" My Docs folder were gone;
- All music files in the My Docs/My Music/iTunes folder were gone;
- All Outlook Express e-mail was gone;
- Several desktop shortcuts to apps/games didnt' work anymore.
Running over and looking at the problem, we discovered:
- The My Docs files were nowhere to be found (did a search on file extensions used in the files, and fragments of the filenames - no results).
- The iTunes files were also nowhere to be found.
- We found all of their Outlook Express e-mail folder files in the Recycle Bin with the ".bak" extension.
- Browsing through the root C-drive, I noted that a number of files within folders were highlighted blue - compressed. Decompressing these folders/files, re-enabled the apps to run.
First thoughts were hard drive problems and/or virus/infection. Scanned with their BitDefender AV (w/ updated def's) and AVG AV (installed just for this scan), AdAware & SpyBot S&D, ran HiJackThis (found nothing out of the ordinary here), and browsed through the HD looking for corrupted folders/files (none found). Ran ScanDisk (full scan) and nothing strange was reported back.
As we had just upgraded the HD about a month ago, we were able to recover most of the files and music from there (sans the past month). We were able to import in the e-mails from the .bak files in the Recycle Bin.
Some items of note:
- Prior to the "crash", and then *after* the crash (except for the missing files and compression), the system runs fine.
- As mentioned, we had upgraded to a new drive about a month ago: to a 160GB from a 40GB.
- The e-mail folder .bak files seem to be generated every 2 months, or so, as we found multiple sets of these in the Recycle Bin.
It seems like I can explain away bits and pieces of the problem to legit Windows processes: the e-mail could be auto-archivingof "old" mail; and, Disc Cleanup might explain the compressed files/folders. Haven't nailed down how the My Docs files and iTunes music just *disappeared* though.
Bottom-line issues we're looking at (which all happened at the same time) are:
- Files in My Docs and My Docs/My Music/iTunes "just disappeared".
- Outlook Express mail folders/files were moved to the Recycle Bin with .bak extensions.
- Multiple folders/files on the C-drive were compressed.
Any thoughts or ideas about what might do all of this, or even bits and pieces of this, would be grealy appreciated. At this point, they're running with the recovered files and working fine - keeping a sharp eye out for any files that suddenly become missing. Thanks much, in advance, for any help.
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