Eek! Where'd they go?

[KMMCurly]

Um, I was wondering if anyone could help me with this. While I was changing my screensaver I naticed that my background, previously a photo from my pictures, had disappered. When I went to change it back I noticed that most of my pictures had disappered.

Can anyone help me get them back or are they gone for good?

[Geek King]

<Assuming Windows>

Are your pictures still on your drive? If so, you can just open up the picture, right click it, and select Set as Background Picture.

If that doesn't take care of it, let us know some more info about what is going on. Where are you trying to change the background picture from? Desktop properties? That kind of thing. Good Luck!

[KMMCurly]

yeah, sorry it is windows.

What I meant that most of my pictures are gone, not just that I can't reach them from desktop properties. Go to 'My pictures' and poof! They're not there.

I was just changing the length of time before my screensaver turns on. Not going anywhere near the option to change my backgound. I have no idea how this could have happened.

[MrSmiley]

yeah, sorry it is windows.

What I meant that most of my pictures are gone, not just that I can't reach them from desktop properties. Go to 'My pictures' and poof! They're not there.

I was just changing the length of time before my screensaver turns on. Not going anywhere near the option to change my backgound. I have no idea how this could have happened.

There's not an easy answer. First, if anybody else has access to the computer, I'd ask them if they moved or deleted the images for whatever reason. Second, I'd do a simple START MENU > SEARCH for the filename of one of the pictures you know. You'd be surprised how often a misplaced click or drag and drop makes me "lose" files. Since the search function will also look in the recycle bin, you don't really need to look in there yourself.

If you simply can't find them anywhere... well that should leave us scratching our heads as to how it disappeared. As for getting them back however, there is file recovery software that you can find but has the following disadvantages: 1) it's seldom "very basic" easy to use, since even trying to guess which gobbeldygook filename pertains to what file can take time (in some cases). 2) The more you USE a drive, the less chance of recovering files on it intact. Anything on the C:\ is particularly bad since windows boots from there. Plus you have to actually INSTALL the software, which usually wants to go on C:\ , it's handy if you have another computer you can piggyback the drive onto for this operation. 3) have I mentioned it's not easy?

That's all I'm going to write at the moment.

[Geek King]

Ok, two more things then. First, any chance they were on a flash drive or external hard drive that could have been disconnected? Second, Someone (or something) may have done something silly like deleteing *.jpg or the like, killing off all those types of pictures. Are all the pictures gone from the section, or just some of them?

[KMMCurly]

There are some pics remaining but most are gone. There's no chance of anyone deleting them, no one but me has access. I just tried searching for filenames of some of lost pics, nada.

I'll try the recovery software but I'm begining to think it's a lost cause. I'll just have to see if I can hunt down the pics again. Thank you Geek King and wildkard for trying to help. It's much apprecitated.

[MrSmiley]

One other thing you can try is right clicking the drive letter icon and choosing the option to scan it for errors. If you didn't delete them, and nobody else deleted them... and yet they're missing: that's always suspicious behavior to me. In that case I suspect glitches with the file system (that chkdsk sometimes fixes), viruses or some outside connection gaining access to your computer and deleting things. I could just be paranoid but you might want to tighten down on those areas if you can.

I don't like computers acting like the Twilight Zone.

[KMMCurly]

THEY'RE BACK!

The computer gods have forgiven me for whatever sin I had committed and have returned my pics!

Thank you computer gods your lesson has been learnt! Never again shall I take my laptop for granted and shall always keep back ups! I shall now go sacrifice a CD in your honor!