Computer help!

[Alice]

My oldest son has taken a liking to hot rod sites..he likes the cars..uh huh

Anyway, I tried to pull a pic of a snail out of the "my pictures" file on my Windows 98 this morning and ALL of my pics are gone, replaced with pics of cars and women with names like "Candy." AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH

There are a lot of pics in that file, none of them mine. Is there a finite amount of space in that file and once it's reached, the older ones start getting deleted? He swears up and down he only saved 5 pictures. Or did my file get taken over by some kind of spyware?

It just makes me sick, some of the pics in that file I will have a really hard time replacing, if I'm able to at all.

I think I need to look into adding additional drives or zip drives or something. My computer is the only one in the house right now with enough RAM to play the games and stuff the kids like to do online.

BTW, there's nothing in the recycle bin. My pics are just gone.

Alice

[cath]

Hmm...I wonder if Geoff would know? Or Digital_Dragon? They are puter gurus, but on different sides of the platform

[Alice]

Any help is appreciated

I've looked all through the system and can't find them anywhere. I wasn't smart enough to have Windows set up for different users but you can bet I'm going to be doing that soon.

Alice

[Junkzoo]

Alice, i know Windows XP has a "go back" feature(to a earlier date) not sure if '98 has this , or even if it will restore things like your pics/documents back to a earlier time,,,,sorry that's all i can offer,,,gonna ask my bunch o' guru's tomorrow at work for ya,,,,

[Alice]

Thanks for looking into it Jeff; I'm just stumped as to where it could have all gone. I have Norton protected recycle bin.

[ShirleyM]

Hi Alice,

First of all, I'm very sorry this has happened!

No, the computer does not auto-delete files, and there's no limit to how much you can put in a directory (folder) other than the limit of the hard drive storage space.

You have Norton running 24/7? Regular live updates?

I will assume they were accidentally all selected, then deleted prior to downloading the other stuff. Whoever accidentally deleted them probably doesn't even know it happened. I lost all of Trevor's 18th birthday pictures this way....

You can't make Win 98 secure for different users.

Also, I realize this is hindsight, but it's for the future, too:

I try to keep irreplaceable files backed up in 3 ways:

Stored on CD

Saved in a different directory that is located in a different directory tree

Saved on the other computer networked to my main computer, and vice versa for my kids' files on the other computer.

I'm not always current with all these precautions, but I try to be.

I hope others can provide some helpful hope for recovery...or other insights as to what happened.

~ Shirley

[tango]

They would still be there, unless they were deleted.Or the hard drive was at it max.I like to keep pictures on my desktop in a folder for one month at a time and then burn to a CD.Jan.,Feb. etc.I feel bad ,I did kind of the same thing a month ago with my camera, I deleted the whole mem.stick , before loading into the computer.Lost all of my 3year olds Halloween pictures