Snowman

CONCLUSION I found and used EASEUS Recovery tool which worked much better than Recuva. Unfortunately by the time I got to use it Windows had installed 7 updates even though I have set it to "ask me before installing". Also Norton updated twice as it was set to do. EASEUS found a number of older deletions but all recent were gone. The lesson. As you said don't use Shift+Delete but let it go to the recycle bin. If it does get permanently deleted then stop everything. Save nothing you are doing unless it its more important the lost file(s). Disconnect connection to the INTERNET. Maybe you can use a networked computer to access the problem one but for sure where the program requires a save do it to some kind of external drive.

I tried all your suggestions with little success. It did come up with the same 3 files as using the wizard for C:\. They have names that make no sense like "~DF2742.tmp and will not open in anything. Trying deep scan after several hours reports that many days are remaining to finish. I tried Recuva on my old XP computer and it gave reasonable results. Just another example of how bad the Vista is. Thanks again for trying. Snowman

More later have to leave now Snowman

I just accidentally deleted these files using Shift+Del from Favorites on my Vista 64 laptop. Recuva is now running for several hours using deep search since did not seem to find otherwise. It shows 1% and 4ays left. Can someone guide me to finding these files in less time than this? Snowman