Lost files and folders

Several people have been telling me that they have lost files or folders - even My Documents and e-mail - recently. Whilst one or two may have been a little unimaginative in their excuses for not doing something, most I reckoned were genuine. Often a careless sweep of a mouse or unfortuante combination of keys, especially involving Alt or Ctrl instead of shift, can have strange effects - the important thing to remember is that nothing just disappears.

Everything you've ever done is there somewhere (unless you have formatted the whole disk). You just don't know where. Searching is worth a try but not using Microsoft's sluggish tool. Get Google Desktop and give that a whirl once it's indexed your drive. Take a peek in your Recycled bin too. Failing that, and especially if there have been visual changes to the desktop, try going back to a recent Restore Point. Start>Control Panel>Performance & Maintenance>Restore Points.

Files never actually leave the hard disk, even when deleted. If there's something important stll missing then you may be able to find it using a program like Recover4All which is worth keeping a link to for another day too.