Help! All of my pictures are GONE!!!!

[susy]

Yesterday I noticed that every picture I've taken in the last (at least) two years is "missing" from my computer (including ALL disney trips). They were under "my pictures" and now they're gone. Its says "modidfied Sunday, May 4 at 1:51 pm. Now, I was on the computer doing my lesson plans, but I've having a hard time believing that I just "accidentally" wiped out all those folders. I've looked in other places and still no luck. Please help!

 

[fortheluvofpooh]

not 100% sure. but when was the last time you updated your computer? My computer has an option somewhere that you can restore it to where it was at a previous date.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Don't just start trying things that people suggest. If the pictures have been deleted, they are probably still recoverable. If you take the wrong actions now, it might make things worse.

Quit using your computer for anything. Take it to a professional that can try to find and recover the pictures. When you get the pictures recovered, immediately back them up to CDs or DVDs.

Let this be a wake up call that you need to have a backup of your pictures. Storing them in one place is a recipe for disaster.

 

[elizke]

I'm going to start with the obvious and ask did you check the recycling bin?

Did you do a C drive search using some of the folder or image names?

 

[cjstarr]

I agree with elizke and Mark;
First be very careful of what you do next if you are not computer savy.
I would do what elizke stated first.
Click on Start then click on Search next click on All Files And Folders where it says All or Part of the File Name type in My Pictures Where it says Look In Scroll to Local Hard Drive (C: ) then click the Search button.

If this doesn't find your pictures AND you have done a restore to an earlier time before this will roll back your computer to a previous date.
"I don't recommend this if you have never done it before"
Find someone who has done it and let them show you how!!!!

If this doesn't work you can PM me or ask for more help as I'm sure there are many other IT people here on the forum.

Charles

 

[alan]

I'm with Mark on this one. You do not want to write anything to that hard disk!

* Check the recycle bin and do a search as described. if you find the pics, you've been lucky.
* If you do not find them, and you are willing to pay to have the pictures recovered, then switch your PC off.
* Go to another PC. Look for disk recovery specialists and phone them up.

If the files have somehow been deleted, the data will still be tere. But with every web page you surf, every file you create, you have a very high chance of over-writing one or more of the pictures and making other ones harder to recover.

Sorry, it's really not a nice picture.

regards,
/alan

 

[Tuffcookie]

Suzy,
Does anyone else use the computer????

I had to take my computer in to the shop over the weekend because a software program I subscribe to (Net Nanny by Content Watch) caused my computer to malfunction. I should have know better but I had not done a back-up of my files in months. I ended up paying dearly for the technicians to make me a back-up file!

Look in the recycle bin or try doing a search. I hope they're there somewhere!

TC

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I hope you can find your pictures.

Our computer crashed in 2006 and we lost the pictures that hadn't been backed up to disc yet. They were from a really special Disney trip. We took it to Comp USA for recovery and we were able to get most of the pictures back, though some of them were distorted. I think it cost us around $80.

Good luck.

 

[MICKEY88]

I agree with elizke and Mark;
First be very careful of what you do next if you are not computer savy.
I would do what elizke stated first.
Click on Start then click on Search next click on All Files And Folders where it says All or Part of the File Name type in My Pictures Where it says Look In Scroll to Local Hard Drive (C: ) then click the Search button.

If this doesn't find your pictures AND you have done a restore to an earlier time before this will roll back your computer to a previous date.
"I don't recommend this if you have never done it before"
Find someone who has done it and let them show you how!!!!

If this doesn't work you can PM me or ask for more help as I'm sure there are many other IT people here on the forum.

Charles

I respectfully disagree with this....

if you are running xp click start then search...

then choose pictures,music, video,

then choose pictures and video..

then click search..


if you enter anything in the all or part of file name, it will limit the search to files with that in the name...so don't do that....

 

[Groucho]

If this doesn't find your pictures AND you have done a restore to an earlier time before this will roll back your computer to a previous date.
"I don't recommend this if you have never done it before"
Find someone who has done it and let them show you how!!!!

Actually, a System Restore will not recover any deleted data like pictures, documents, etc. It's only for drivers, system files, etc.

To the OP: if you're doing a search, you can also go into "More Advanced Options" and tell it to search hidden files and folders (it's really dumb that XP doesn't search them by default.) Search for *.jpg and hopefully it'll find what you're after.

But don't be afraid to either take it somewhere or find a friend (who you're sure is competent!) who does IT work "on the side" and see about restoring them. The ideal way to do it is to boot off a CD (not into your regular Windows install) and use a recovery program that will scan your hard drive for deleted files, but setting up a recovery CD like that is a bit complicated, and not something you want to try to do on the PC in question. Another option is pull the hard drive out and use it as a secondary drive in another PC and try to recover data that way. Either way, it can get tricky. Hopefully they're just sitting in your Recycle Bin, or the folder was moved (XP makes it way too easy to accidentally move and lose important folders.)

 

[Dznefreek]

When you search check the "search Hidden Folders " option.

 

[ThurlFan]

Another vote not to use the computer for ANYTHING that's not absolutely necessary until you recover the pictures. Even browsing the web will store temporary files to your hard drive, which may overwrite the space the pictures used to be in, making them unrecoverable. Find the money to take your system to a professional for whom you've gotten personal recommendations if you can. There are too many ways things can go wrong if you try to fix it yourself!

 

[ThurlFan]

PS: I hope you get your pictures back!

 

[ThurlFan]

Another question: Have you recently added a user ID on the computer? The things in "My Pictures", "My Documents" etc are tied to to the user account that's currently active. If you have multiple accounts on your PC (i.e. for you, your spouse, and a child) then you will not see those files unless you log on as that account. So if you had one account to start with, and created a separate account for another purpose, it might appear that the files are gone when they are simply sitting in a different profile. Hope that's not too confusing!

 

[fortheluvofpooh]

AHHH, i learned so much from OP & PP replies. This is why I always take my puter to our local tv show computer pals. I thought the restore would restore all of your stuff. Sorry. Hence the reason I am not a computer technician. Good LUck

 

[cmwade77]

For those that say to back up, I couldn't agree more, I actually use an online back up service (costs me about $5.00 per month for unlimited storage) that is ALWAYS running in the background, as soon as I add new photos, they are backed up. In addition I now subscribe to Smugmug and I am working on getting all of my photos uploaded to there as a secondary backup for my photos at least. In addition, I am still working on doing DVD backups. Also, all of my data is on an external drive, so if there is ever an emergency, all I have to do is grab the drive and take it with me. I also am going to get an additional external hard drive and use that as a backup. I will not loose my dat, especially my pictures, I currently have about 25,500 pictures and I know some are missing, so they must be on a CD somewhere.

Oh, and also do not use your computer for anything, take it to a professional, as they can take the hard drive out and examine it with another computer, so that the swap file doesn't overwrite any data.