Windows Vista problem - HELP!

[CollectorNC]

Hey guys, I need some help from the computer experts on her.

Last night I was downloading some stuff, left the room, came back in and saw all these little red X's in the taskbar at the bottom and then an ominous message about a hard disk failure.

I immediately rebooted and when my user profile came back up, i had nothing but a few items in my Documents folder, I had the same wallpaper I only recently put on there, but all files I had on Desktop and Documents were basically gone except some in the recycle bin.

I ran a System Restore which is not suppose to delete files and I thought it would put my system back to how it was on 11/20. (I've done it many times at work and on other computer running XP and figured it would be the same on Vista.)

Well, it did nothing and only managed to mess up my Norton so I had to re-download and re-install that. Now this seems to ONLY affect my USER profile and my wife's is fine. She has all her data, etc.

I ran diagnostics like chkdsk and others and they found no issues.

If 100GB of data is gone on my profile, it still shows my HDD space as 70 out of 200GB left so apparently the hard drive still has a lot of data that is apparently now invisisble...

I've never seen this before and I ran Malwarebyters (the quick scan) and Norton, the quick scan and nothing was found in the startup files...

Any ideas???

 

[Shropt]

Run Malwarebytes again with a Full Scan. Most scary things are only found in Full Scans of Malwarebytes nowadays.

Let me know when you've done that.

 

[Kuzeh]

Buy a Mac, problem solved!

 

[thenammagazine]

I use Ad-Aware. It's free (for the basic version) and always does a great job at cleaning out all the crap: https://downloads.yahoo.com/software/windows-security-ad-aware-free-internet-security-s200138

Buy a Mac, problem solved!

Because it's always good to trash a computer and buy a new one that's only compatible with 20% of the world's programs, aftermarket products, etc.

 

[CollectorNC]

Run Malwarebytes again with a Full Scan. Most scary things are only found in Full Scans of Malwarebytes nowadays.

Let me know when you've done that.

Thanks! Will do. I plan on running full Malwarebytes and Norton. I just have never seen this happen to one user profile and the almost "fake" indication of HDD failure, yet the disk checks out with no bad sectors and the mystery 100+ gig that are now invisible.

 

[CollectorNC]

Buy a Mac, problem solved!

I'm not far off to be honest. Nothing like going home after a hard day and apparently losing eveything...yet, there's still 100+GB showing up as used...

 

[CollectorNC]

I use Ad-Aware. It's free (for the basic version) and always does a great job at cleaning out all the crap: https://downloads.yahoo.com/software/windows-security-ad-aware-free-internet-security-s200138



Because it's always good to trash a computer and buy a new one that's only compatible with 20% of the world's programs, aftermarket products, etc.

I have it too Nam. Will run before or after Malware. Whatever it is is hidden deep and acted very very quickly. And if not that, then I guess it was a legitimate hdd failure...but odd it would only affect one user profile....

 

[thenammagazine]

I have it too Nam. Will run before or after Malware. Whatever it is is hidden deep and acted very very quickly. And if not that, then I guess it was a legitimate hdd failure...but odd it would only affect one user profile....

Just make sure you run the full scan and then after it removes the malicious programming, restart.

 

[CollectorNC]

Just make sure you run the full scan and then after it removes the malicious programming, restart.

Will do. Going to run all three of the full scans for all of those products...hoping that's it...

 

[thenammagazine]

Will do. Going to run all three of the full scans for all of those products...hoping that's it...

Just make sure you do it one at a time.

 

[Kuzeh]

Because it's always good to trash a computer and buy a new one that's only compatible with 20% of the world's programs, aftermarket products, etc.

I wasn't talking to you...
!

 

[thenammagazine]

I wasn't talking to you...
!

Nope, you're right, you weren't. You were just trolling.

 

[Darth Cruel]

This issue reminds me of a gag program that a neighbor of mine got from his son. It made it appear that everything was deleted when it wasn't.


But it all came back up by itself after 30 seconds and I have not heard of anyone having gag programs like this for years.

I hope the malwarebytes/ad-aware fix works for you.

 

[CollectorNC]

UPDATE...well I found a post on some obscure forum and went home and tried it AFTER I did the scans, which both Malwarebytes and Norton Internet Security came up with NOTHING.... So anyways, the post mentioned some viruses or malware switching regular files to the "hidden file" designation and thus the OS recognizes and treats them as such, hence them disappearing. Oddest thing, the post said to look in users/appdata/local and look for any .exe or non-extension files and I did and nothing. And that is a relief and concern as something did it and I want to make sure it is off the system. Only thing I can think of, is when this initially happened I ran System Restore and perhaps it removed the virus/malware but for some reason didn't fix the hidden file situation. Now I have see through files that I am not sure how to switch back to regular files. I'm sure there is an option like those "open with" options where you can change what software program opens them...

 

[mr.thrifty]

Porn = 1

CollectorNC = 0

 

[CollectorNC]

?? Trust me, if that were the case, it would have happened a long time ago.