All files have lost their way.

[ringway]

Dear knowledgable members.

The files on my laptop have been behaving strangely recently.

It's as though the destinations of files including Music, Pictures, Word, Access and even those sent to cute PDF for printing have lost their way.

The files are there if I search for them (some are harder to find than others) but there are hundreds in different categories/locations that have gone astray and the task of finding and correcting the paths is daunting.

Would a system restore help?

Any ideas on how I can remedy the problems would be greatly appreciated.

TIA.

Paul.

 

[ringway]

A system restore to November does seem to have helped in correcting some of the problems.

Behaviour is more normal and PDF printing is back to correct destination but pictures and music files are still stored in various locations - untidy and awkward.

 

[Noodle-Pulp]

Did you check for viruses? (a bit obvious I know..)

 

[ringway]

Did you check for viruses? (a bit obvious I know..)

I doubt there could be a virus (McAfee and Advanced System Care on the laptop) but the behaviour of the files and machine (slow) does suggest something is perhaps taking control of things.

 

[Piff]

Didn't think system restore affected documents, etc

Would suggest running anti-virus, anti spyware & registry checker

 

[ringway]

Didn't think system restore affected documents, etc

Would suggest running anti-virus, anti spyware & registry checker

Spyware is removed and registry kept in health on a daily basis with Advanced System Care.

I'll run an anti-virus program and see if that helps.


Thanks.

Paul.

 

[grober]

It sounds as if your somehow logged on as a different user for some reason. Try logging on as the administrator or with your original user account. Have a look at
control panel---user accounts ----to see all the accounts on your computer.

 

[ringway]

Thanks Graeme, I'll try that.

Is it usual for music and pictures to be stores in four different locations?

Also some pictures are stored as videos and finding the images is hard work.

 

[crockers]

That will teach you for visiting those dodgy sites.

 

[ringway]

That will teach you for visiting those dodgy sites.

Yes! Thanks for introducing me.

Maybe I have got an infection after all.

 

[crockers]

Paul, you know I don't condom that sort of behaviour.

 

[EDZ649]

Paul, it sounds to me like your drive is fragmented. Have you tried doing a defrag recently?

 

[ringway]

Thanks Leigh but the drives are auto defragged each day and deep optimised every few weeks.

I suspect things started to go wrong when I reinstalled the Samsung symbian based phone software and (because that software is useless at assigning the correct genres to music files) got worse when I installed the apparently immovable MP3 Music Sorter Database. Never again.