[Solved] A treasury of lost pictures and video's.

[Hafoi Bin Ereafower]

Hallo,

 

New here and hoping for some help to recover photo's and video's.

 

I run an Acer Aspire 5735 laptop which is about four/five years old equipped with Vista home premium used for bit of home office stuff - letters etc, some surfing of my favourite sailing websites nothing adventurous or dangerous to the laptops health. I run Norton antivirus which I keep updated.

 

Recently upgraded my old Nokia phone to a smart new Samsung Galaxy and downloaded an interface programme so my existing Itunes library on the Acer could talk to my new Galaxy. All went well and the lappy and new phone gave me all my old library - so far so good.

 

Except that next time I opened up I got a new search engine and toolbar inhabiting my old IE search engine (won't give it a name as not sure of forum rules) but suffice to say it slowed things up and populated the home page with copious ad's - you know the sort of thing "fat belly - thin belly" click here !

 

 

So I went on a search to find how to get rid of the thing and learn't that it's Prog's etc delete plus go to Toolbars and Extensions find the name and get rid or find the location file and do the same - - thing was delete as much of what I could find the blessed engine and toolbar kept coming back - clearly some of it was hidden somewhere. Finally found some advice on line which advised using "Safe Mode" going back to where I found a "Smartbar" file and deleting it's contents.

 

Bingo it worked - back to normal - except that in opening my pictures and video files - one minute they were there the next gone - all the folders with their names still there but contents disappeared.

 

As our dear departed Francis Howard would say "Woe and Thrice Woe" as these files were precious - yes I know I should have backed them up - and I promise to do so in future - but is there wise sage on here that can offer succour to a silly downloading sucker - can I get them back ?

[RandyL]

Can you roll back your system using System Restore? Pick a date before you installed the interface program.

 

Once that is done if you proceed and get the toolbar and search program again post in our malware section and we will help you remove it safely.

[Hafoi Bin Ereafower]

Thanks for the response Randy.

 

Tried (twice) the system restore facility and both times got the legend "could not restore your computers files".

 

Is there anything else I can try ?

 

Regards,

 

David.

p.s. everything else on the computer seems fine.

[KenB]

Hi

 

(won't give it a name as not sure of forum rules

What was it - our security experts may need it later :)

 

If you click on Start .....type in ----- .jpg -----( that is full stop jpg ) ....don't hit ENTER

This should bring up any photos stored on the system.

If you point the mouse at the file it will give you the location.

[Hafoi Bin Ereafower]

Thanks ken,

 

Sorry for tardy response been away for couple of days.

 

Tried your suggestion and it brought down those few photo's I've since saved so it does work - - but not for those photo's I've lost.

 

The search engine downloaded with the Itunes interface app was Babylon (including a toolbar). The other names associated with it were Helperbar.com and Linkbury discovered (hidden away ?) inside files on the C drive. As said above the only way I could get rid of the Linkbury elements were by opening the computer in "Safe Mode" - it wouldn't let me delete them in normal mode even as administrator - - - hope that info might help others.

 

Oh - - the Itunes interface software was Doubletwist - - might have been my fault Babylon came down at the same time as I might have missed something and given permission - hey ** !

 

 

In fairness Doubletwist worked well although I have now deleted it too - just to be on the safe side.

 

If you've (or anyone else) have any other suggestions on how to get my photo's back would be delighted to hear them.

[KenB]

Hi,

 

Try this ...

Start .....type in ......cmd......right click on the cmd.exe that appears top left of screen > Run as Administrator

 

At the prompt type....C: then ENTER

You will see C:\>

Now type .....

ATTRIB -h *.* then hit ENTER

(there is a space between ATTRIB and -h and between -h and *.*

 

If there are hidden files on the C: drive this will reveal them.

I am thinking that the photos may have been hidden.

 

===============

 

If the above doesn't work ....

 

Try running System Restore from Safe Mode

Switch on > constantly tap F8 about once per second > select Safe Mode from the list of options.

 

==========

 

Have you looked in the Recycle Bin ?

 

==========

 

Try Recuva software

click here

If they have been deleted you may be able to locate them ( or some of them ) with this.

[Hafoi Bin Ereafower]

Hi Ken,

 

Tried "cmd" and got lots of results about 10 pages of about 25 items per page all entitled - "access denied-C:\windows\system32\ ??????

 

The ?'s being individual names - none of which I recognised as being anything to do with a "Pictures" file - so basically left it alone.

 

Thought about using System Restore in safe mode but didn't want to reintroduce anything for the time being so that's on the backburner.

 

Yep - already looked in the Recycle Bin and nothing there that looked like it related to Pictures.

 

Went to "Recuva" and downloaded and paid for their Prof version it was twenty quid but cheaper than a lot of others on the web and of course it came reccomended !

 

It identified about 400 odd pictures from a what the programme called a deep scan - from these I got back and have been able to save about 75 - so it's obvious there's remnants of my complete pictures file in there somewhere.

 

So - - thinking about it from here - there's obviously stuff still there which the first deep scan couldn't bring back in a sufficiently recoverable state - so can I ask.

 

Is safe mode still an option and am likely to reintroduce some of the elements I don't want ?

 

If I use Recuva again will it discover anything more ?

 

Is there anything else I can do to recover the remainder - Recuva by the way labelled some non-recovered pictures as "unrecoverable" "poor" or "good".

 

Thanks for your help.

[KenB]

access denied-C:\windows\system32\ ??????

These would be hidden system files to which you would not have access.

The *.* literally identifies all hidden files.

From what you say later on - the pics have been deleted not simply hidden.

 

Is safe mode still an option

You could give it a try - revert the system to a date before the Nokia upgrade.

No guarantee that the pics will return though.

 

If I use Recuva again will it discover anything more ?

It could do.

The problem is that every time you use your system and save stuff etc this overwrites the section of the disk where your deleted files are and this will fragment them.

 

If you are going to run Recuva again do it before the system restore.

 

Recuva by the way labelled some non-recovered pictures as "unrecoverable" "poor" or "good".

The un-recoverable is probably due to system usage and the file has become fragmented.

It is important not to use the system ( or use it as little as possible ) in order to maintain the files integrity when trying to recover them.

[Hafoi Bin Ereafower]

Hi Ken,

 

Believe you were right about the pictures and video's being deleted.

 

The good news though is that over the last few days have been using Recuva on the memory card from my camera plus the internal memory of my camcorder and although I'd deleted (after saving to my computer) all the photo's/video's - Recuva brought back pretty much all of the content from last summer - - brilliant !

 

So with the previous discovery of photo's by Recuva from my laptop I've been able to rebuild roughly 75/80% of my photo and video library. They are now backed up in two places !

 

The interesting thing was that from the laptop Recuva was only able to bring back older photo's pre 2012 whilst only ones from last summer could be reclaimed from the camera card and camcorder.

 

I tried System Restore again this time in Safe Mode and again had no success - maybe I was doing something wrong.

 

So all in all a successful outcome and whilst I wouldn't want to repeat the experience I've learn't a fair bit about how the computer works plus of course the discipline bit about backing up.

 

Many thanks to you for your help.

 

David.

[KenB]

Hi David

 

80% recovered - excellent :)

I am pleased that you managed to get back many of the missing files.

 

I will mark this one up as "Solved".