I turned my laptop on this morning after doing homework last night. And I notice everything on my desktop went missing. I looked around in all my folders and found everything that was on the desktop in a "Recently Changed" folder, so luckily it's all still here. But I need to know why it did this, it removed every icon except the programs that are installed onto my machine, like FireFox, Norton Anti-Virus, DiabloII, AIM, etc. Those are still there, but all my .txt documents and music and other folders went missing! Thankfully I found them, and if I didn't I still have Carbonite that would restore everything I backed up. But I only have 5 days left of that so I need to figure this out quick before it happens again but worse!

Thanks for your time.


System specs:
HP G60-235DX Notebook PC - Product Specifications


Hardware
Product Name G60-235DX
Product Number NB042UA#ABA
Microprocessor 2.00 GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core Mobile Processor T4200
Microprocessor Cache 1MB L2 Cache
Memory 3072MB
Memory Max 4096MB
Video Graphics Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500M
Video Memory Up to 1309MB
Hard Drive 320GB (5400RPM)
Multimedia Drive LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Display 16.0" Diagonal High Definition HP BrightView Display (1366x768)
Fax/Modem High speed 56k modem
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN
Wireless Connectivity

* 802.11b/g WLAN

Sound Altec Lansing speakers
Keyboard 101-key compatible
Pointing Device Touch Pad with On/Off button and dedicated vertical scroll Up/Down pad
PC Card Slots
External Ports

* 5-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for Secure Digital cards, MultiMedia cards, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, or xD Picture cards
* 3 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0
* 1 Headphone out
* 1 microphone-in
* 1 HDMI
* 1 VGA (15-pin)
* 1 RJ-11 (modem)
* 1 RJ -45 (LAN)

Dimensions 14.88" (L) x 9.9" (D) x 13.8" (min H) -1.72" (max H)
Weight 6.57lbs
Security

* Kensington MicroSaver lock slot
* Power-on password
* Accepts 3rd party security lock devices

Power

* 65W AC Adapter
* 6-Cell Lithium-Ion battery

What's In The Box
Software
Operating System:
Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1
Security and Support:
Symantec Norton Internet Security 2009 (including 60 days complimentary live update)

HP Help & Support Center

HP Recovery Manager

HP Home Network Center

HP Total Care Advisor
Multimedia:
HP DVD Play (14)

Muvee Reveal

Cyberlink DVD Suite

Adobe Acrobat Reader

HP Games Powered by Wild Tangent
Productivity and Finance:
Microsoft Works

Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition: 60 Day Trial Version
Internet Solutions:
HP Total Care Set Up

Microsoft Internet Explorer

My first suggestion would have been to shutdown and restart. Before logging on , give it a min. to do its thing. Sometimes you can login before vista has finished its start up process and you get the default profile.

I wish I would have rebooted right away but didn't till the end of the day. But I did reboot and I got some icons back, but there are a lot of .txt files im missing and some others ones as well which im still trying to locate any idea on where they might be? It's not like I myself deleted them, dont they have to be somewhere?

Thanks.

Can I get some HELP here PLEASE!?


Would anyone know where could my other files on the desktop have gone?

There some way to make my desktop go back to the way it shouldn't be so I can go back to that "Recently Changed" folder? So I can backup those files on a CD or something.

Somone please help.

as you are aware, yesterday was our Independence Day in the USA. Most of us were off celebrating with our friends and family.

If your using carbonite, then you should be able to restore via their tool set.

suggestion, why don't you do a search on your hard drive and look for a text file (other than recent files) to see if you can locate them.

Carbonite failed, so I uninstalled it. It's terrible.


As for your suggestion, im not the brightest crayon in the box but I know What the... im doing. I did the search and nothing came up.

So again,

Does anyone know where these files might be?

Please don't waste my time or yours.

It looks like your profile crapped out and it created a duplicate. Look in C:\Users and list the folders

If what happened is what i think you should see something like this:

Administrator
rich420 -< original profile
rich420~1 or rich420.1 <- duplicate

Also, check to see what username is logged in via the Task Manager.

richard is logged on.


When I go to C:\Users, I just see "richard", "breezy", "Public", "TEMP"

This post has been edited by rich420: Jul 5 2009, 04:28 PM

Did you find anything after searching for your missing files through Windows Search?

No, nothing.

Lets try a system restore.