Files and folders missing from desktop

[Judy B]

My desktop folders keep on disappearing on its own. I had checked in recycle bin but there is nothing. I had not deleted them. I am using a recovery software called PC Tools. The tool does not show up any information on the missing folder. It list some old word files only. There was one folder listed. When I click on that to recover I got error that the source cannot be found. The software is able to restore many old files but only the desktop folders are not recoverable. What can be the cause behind this. On reboot for sometime the folders are seen but suddenly they go away after a few seconds. Is this a virus. How can locate the back and get my data from them.

[Taidje]

It can be due to hidden file settings. Try to go in Folder Options and click on show hidden files. The folders might appear. Also right click on the desktop and choose show icons. One thing you can also try. Open My Computer and go on C drive. Then open folder with your username. In that click on Desktop. Can you see the folders there. If not then on the address bar at top type full path of your folder. Example C:/Document & Settings/username/Desktop/nameoffolder. Hit enter. If it is not deleted it will open up and you can copy paste the data. If you can access those files, then it is a virus issue. San your system in safe mode thoroughly. And if all this stuff does not work then run a hard drive scan to locate bad sectors. You can find that through any other third party software or disk defragmentor.

[LeonL]

I am too facing the same thing. My folders just went off the desktop. I had copied some movies in that. Even the recovery software are not able to find them. Even if they were deleted at least the recovery software might show me the details. I had checked on many forums to find answers on it. But there is nothing listed about that. I had tried that manual way of typing the folder path and accessing the files. That worked. I had copied the data and kept in another partition. But this issue can't be ignored. Last night just for testing I had copied the song folder on desktop and that too disappeared. Does the issue lies with Windows. My antivirus does not found any virus in the computer. I am planing to run system restore and hope it will be fixed.

[viswa_1981]

Hi
I haven't found a solution yet. The files and folder seem to be on the
desktop but they are invisible, only shortcuts and other desktop icons can
be viewed on the desktop. I'm still waiting for someone to help me out solve this problem. i installed Blackberry Desktop Manager after my desktop file is missing .

[SUpER CoP]

Hi
I haven't found a solution yet. The files and folder seem to be on the
desktop but they are invisible, only shortcuts and other desktop icons can
be viewed on the desktop. I'm still waiting for someone to help me out solve this problem. i installed Blackberry Desktop Manager after my desktop file is missing .

Just to be sure, can you right click on desktop - tick in show desktop icons? I too had a similar problem but i was able to fix the problem without doing a system restore. What I did was go into regedit Local Machine>Software>Microsoft>Windows NT>Current Version>Profile List. When i went there, it was having 2 identical profiles there but one had a .BAK extension. So I just changed the non BAK one and removed the BAK from the profile with it. After I clicked on the profile. In the right window there was a entry call State. I just changed it to 0. All was fine after a restart.

[voidbnull]

Of possible help since this worked for me when no other suggested fixes did. I'm using 64 bit Vista.

For no apparent reason I lost all files inside of folders on my desktop along with some other files. They were no longer in my desktop folder either.

I navigated to my desktop folder and right-clicked and chose 'previous versions' and looked for the desktop config that I'd last had before the items disappeared.

I restored that previous version and all is back and well on the desktop.

This major disappearance reminded me not to keep files and such on the desktop, to move the files to another folder and then put shortcuts to them on the desktop instead.

Hope this helps someone.