missing documents and files
 

hi, my gf's computer was infected with a virus, so we tried to boot the computer in safe mode to clean and remove the virus, the problem i'm having is when it first loaded up safemode, the start bar is completely blanked out, so we restarted again and this time her desktop is now empty and all her documents files are all gone. tried restoring, chkdsk etc can't find the files. the only thing left to do is run file recovery i guess? any suggestions which program to use? and anyone know why all the file is deleted and what are the chances of recovering it?:bowdown:

The less you use the computer, the better your chances are.

Best to stop using it altogether and take the hard drive out and connect it to another computer as a slave drive.

I would recommend you download a copy of Hiren's Boot CD and use DiskDigger to look for and recover the files.

it's a laptop so it's gonna be hard to take it apart and plug it in another computer as a slave

Is it logging into a different profile, perhaps? What version of windows is this?

Laptop HD's are not that hard to take out.

it's not too hard to take it apart but it's urgent lol so i don't have time for that ~ it's running windows 7, i logged on as admin and went to each user's documents and it's empty

i once permenantly deleted my images from vacation...i used Recuva and i recovered everything and only 2 or 3 images were distorted.

So yes...DON'T do anything to the hard drive before you attempt to recover your files...anything you do now will just write over it.

All notebook HD have been SATA for the last few years. The connectors on a notebook SATA HD and a 3.5" desktop SATA HD are the same, so making the connections is easy.

sigh.. so far recovered some files using quick scan.. now running extensive scan.. hopefully it'll recover more files..

Taking the hardrive out is the best plan, and if it was truly urgent, would probably have been your best course of action.

Yeah all real techs would take out the hard drive and hook it up to a 2nd system.. I know you are trying to find a quick fix but when viruses get at the o.s it better to just reload windows. That why you should always do back up on your system...