Recuva folder visible but all others now gone?

[chook]

I used Recuva to recover some files on my C: and made a new folder with Recuva on my external drive to send them to. It did, but when I went to the external drive all my other folders etc. were gone, and only the one folder I created with Recuva shows! I can see that my external drive has a ton of data on it, but nothing is showing except the recuva folder. What the hell is going on? I want all my other folders on that external drive listed and useable!!!

Thanks, I'm terrified I've lost all my pictures!

Courtney

[DennisD]

Hi Courtney, and welcome to the forum.

 

That sounds very strange, and I can't think what could have caused such a serious issue, but I understand your concern.

 

First of all, if possible, don't write anything else to that drive until we can come up with a cause and then hopefully a solution. If the worst comes to the worst, it shouldn't be too difficult to recover all your pictures from that drive using free recovery software, which we'll help you with if it comes to that.

 

Can you tell us your Operating System, the size of the drive and how much free space it has, and the file system type, ie NTFS, FAT, and any other information you can think of relevant to what's happened?

 

Does Windows still "see" the drive OK in "My Computer"?

 

My first thought is have you checked inside the Recuva folder in case some odd occurrence has placed all your other folders inside that one?

 

Again, whatever you do, don't panic and try anything yourself unless you know what you're doing.

 

Post back with whatever helpful information you can.

[chook]

Many thanks for the quick reply. My system is running XP and the computer does recognize the usb external drive that is NTFS. I want to state right up front that I ended up with the virus from hell, which deleted my restore points, disabled my keyboard and mouse at startup so I couldn't get into recovery mode, and also disabled task manager. I reinstalled XP from my CD, with the usb drive disconnected. I had to do a destructive re-install because this virus had even corrupted my recovery files for a repair instead of full destructive reinstall. The good news was that even though the C drive was formatted, Recuva found the pictures that were on it, and that is where the trouble started. After recovering them, I thought I'd move them to the external drive. I used Recuva to make a new folder. When I did that, it was strange that the new folder created had a + in front of it as shown in the Recuva directory. I even clicked on the plus to see if it would expand, but it did not. I then checked each picture I wanted, and said OK. They were moved over immediately to the new folder on the external drive. When I closed Recuva and looked on the external drive, only the Recuva created folder was on my external drive! I looked all through it, and thinking about the + sign in front of the folder (when I was in Recuva), I thought it must have made a sub folder with all the other directories. NO. Nothing else shows on the folders list. The external drive is a 500Gig drive, and shows that it is 2/3 full of data, but no folders are there.

 

Right now I'm running Recuva on the external drive and it has found over 47,000 files just with a "picture" search, so the data is there. Should I just use Recuva to get all the pics and move them to my 1 Terrabyte drive?

Many thanks for any ideas on this. My one big regret is that I did not look at my external drive BEFORE I created the folder. Maybe the virus had deleted all the folders off it??

Regards,

Courtney

[DennisD]

Hi Courtney.

 

I'm not a malware expert, but it is possible I suppose for a virus to migrate to an external drive, and it would make some sense of your problem.

 

Under the circumstances, I would recover as many of the files as you can, while you can, and if that's successful we really need to sort out the virus issue as it won't get any better.

 

What I will do is send a pm to our Spyware Moderator, and ask him to look at this thread with a view to tying in your virus with the disappearing folders, and of course he'll advise you of the next best steps to take. That may not be the cause of the problem, but with absolutely no idea at the moment as to what else it could be, that's all I can run with.

 

Do whatever you can, and keep an eye on the thread.

 

One thought that has just occurred, is do you have an empty partition on that large drive you mention? I'm simply thinking that if the cause is a virus, there is the possibility of it being carried over with recovered files. I don't know if that is actually possible, but it's worth thinking about.

 

If you have a lot of other stuff on that drive, I would maybe suggest leaving things as they are until we get some expert advice.

[SpySentinel]

Hi Courtney,

 

I will be checking to make sure you do not have an infection.

 

 

Step #1

 

Please download the following program to your desktop:

 

Unhide.exe

 

Once the program has been downloaded, double-click on the Unhide.exe icon on your desktop and allow the program to run. This program will remove the +H, or hidden, attribute from all the files on your hard drives. If there are any files that were purposely hidden by you, you will need to hide them again after this tool is run.

 

 

Step #2

 

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

 

Double Click mbam-setup.exe to install the application.

• Make sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, then click Finish.
  
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.
  
• Once the program has loaded, select "Perform Quick Scan", then click Scan.
  
• The scan may take some time to finish, so please be patient.
  
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  
• Make sure that everything is checked , and click Remove Selected.
  
• When disinfection is completed, a log will open in Notepad and you may be prompted to Restart.(See Extra Note)
  
• The log is automatically saved by MBAM and can be viewed by clicking the Logs tab in MBAM.
  
• Copy & Paste the entire report in your next reply.
  

Extra Note:

If MBAM encounters a file that is difficult to remove, you will be presented with 1 of 2 prompts, click OK to either and let MBAM proceed with the disinfection process, if asked to restart the computer, please do so immediately.

 

 

 

Step #3

 

Run ESET Online Scan

 

1. Hold down Control and click on the following link to open ESET OnlineScan in a new window.
   ESET OnlineScan
   
2. Click the button.
   
3. For alternate browsers only: (Microsoft Internet Explorer users can skip these steps)
   1. 
      
   2. Click on to download the ESET Smart Installer. Save it to your desktop.
      
   3. Double click on the icon on your desktop.
      

[*]Check

[*]Click the button.

[*]Accept any security warnings from your browser.

[*]Check

[*]Push the Start button.

[*]ESET will then download updates for itself, install itself, and begin scanning your computer. Please be patient as this can take some time.

[*]When the scan completes, push

[*]Push , and save the file to your desktop using a unique name, such as ESETScan. Include the contents of this report in your next reply.

[*]Push the button.

[*]Push

You can refer to this animation by neomage if needed.