Can't restore certain intact files.

I had a folder get deleted recently, leaving a lot of files that I need to recover. When I scan with Recuva, it shows the files, but only if I select 'show securely overwritten files'. The files are all listed under a '?' directory on my drive, with 0-length names. In spite of that, all the files are in 'excellent' condition and the preview pane shows all the images perfectly. The problem is when I go to restore them. When I hit restore I get an error saying 'The system cannot find the path specified.' The error only happens on these files, not the ones with intact names.

you securly deleted them, AFAIK they are NOT retrievable

I did not securely delete them. Recuva just thinks they were. Again, the files are in excellent condition and I can preview them. It just seems to be trying to create the recovered file without a filename.

In normal scan the only un-named files I see are zero length with c:\?\ path. If I select show undeleted files I do get a few un-named files which are greater than zero length, but if I try to recover these I get an Access Denied message.

Did you delete the folder to the recycler? Is the recycler clear? What size is shown for these files?

The files are not in the recycle bin. I'm not sure exactly *how* they got deleted in the first place. Sizes shown go from kilobytes to megabytes, and seem to be correct for the files. I am not showing undeleted files, I'm not doing a deep scan, and I am not showing 0 length files.

The only other thing I can think of to check is whether or not the file clusters are overwritten, and you are in fact seeing preview images from another location. This does not, as far as I can see, resolve the unfindable path problem, but it might be some further info. I have no other bright ideas unfortunately.

I was somewhat peeved off when I tried 'recuva'. Having spend 50 minutes waiting for the results of the search to recover some misplaced or accidentally deleeted video and photo files from a slave harddrive, my first impression was "You're Beaut"! It seemed the recovery was successful and the files restored. "Bulldust"!!!

When I tried to play some of them through Windows Media Player 11 my didappointment set in. I only got this error message and nothing else to look at: "Windows Media Player cannot access the file. The file might be in use, you might not have access to the computer where the file is stored, or your proxy settings might not be correct."

Well, everything else performs great, I am the administrator and no other user is involved, hence no permission problems and no other files or programs were in use. So, back to the drawing board, unless a solution is on hand.

Frank.

Sorry about the delay, I moved into the college dorm and a bad outlet took out my PSU.

I'm sure it's showing previews from the right files, and it reports nothing as overwritten. As far as I can tell it's trying to open output files without names and that chokes it.