I have folders for each one of my projects inside the "My Documents" folder. 20+ folders, one for each project. Inside each of those folders I have several more folders; pictures folder, programming source folder, manuals folder, datasheets folder, CAD models folder, etc. and all these folders have subfolders upon subfolders, very organized. When I went today into one of my projects folders that I haven't visited in a while, my entire folder structure is gone but all my project files are still there. All 4,000+ files are dumped into the parent project folder. I have no idea how this happened or how to fix it.

I can't even come up with something intelligent to google. Any ideas?

Windows 7 professional

 

Stop using the drive the folder was on and look for a program that can undelete files.

If you only have one drive, you need to stop using the computer to prevent new files from being created.

EDIT: Reread your post and saw that you just lost the folder structure. That's not as bad as losing all of the files. A disk check utility might also be able to restore them. But you may have to reorganize the orphaned files manually.

 

When I right-click the parent folder and choose "Properties," it shows me that there are 233 folders, but I do not see them

 

See if anything in this will help:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17119/windows-7-recover-lost-deleted-files

 

OK I figured it out. This is weird.

The "Arrange By" function seems to have changed on me. Or I am going crazy.

Per my recollection (like, yesterday), when you change the "Arrange by" option, it only applies to the files in the current folder; not the current folder plus all subfolders.
If I would choose Arrange by Date Modified, it would sort the files and folders according to date.
So if there were 3 files and 3 folders in a folder, 6 items would be shown, per the date modified.

NOW it seems to have changed, and when I choose Arrange by Date Modified, it shows all files and all folders and all subfolders and files in subfolders, arranged by date.
So if there are 3 files and 3 folders in a folder, and I choose Arrange by Date Modified, there will be 4,000+ items shown.





I can fix this now by choosing "Arrange by Folder" - an option that I don't remember being there:





I assume this happened via a Windows update. I really like it now that I understand it. But I wish I had been given a heads up.
(or maybe it's always been this way and I'm crazy)

 

I assume this happened via a Windows update.

Glad it worked out.

I hate Windows update.

That's a strong word, but Microsoft has cost me so much lost work doing Win10 updates. Why can't they give you a warning, that you have to click away, before doing reboots? Or figure out a way to save the state of all programs running and restore them after reboot? Guess I'll have to figure out how to restrict automatic updates because Microsoft is so stupid...

 

I hate Windows update.

FIFY.

 

Glad it worked out.

I hate Windows update.

That's a strong word, but Microsoft has cost me so much lost work doing Win10 updates. Why can't they give you a warning, that you have to click away, before doing reboots? Or figure out a way to save the state of all programs running and restore them after reboot? Guess I'll have to figure out how to restrict automatic updates because Microsoft is so stupid...

It is (or was) possible to turn it off. I had to turn it off on my laptops I use for PLC programming. The older PLC software (esp from Allen Bradley) was/is very finnicky about updates. Would only work on certain service packs. I haven't tried it lately because I'm not "allowed" to (I have admin rights but respect IT's wishes) so I don't remember how, and haven't done it on newer versions of windows.

You could always disconnect from the internet.

 

I would like it if someone could confirm/refute my assertion that this is a new feature. I'm beginning to question myself.

 

I organize my files in a similar way but I start from the C: drive. (Or the root of another disk drive.) My project directory at the moment has 9740 files in 1496 directories. (Or folders if you preffer.)

Les.

 

Hi,

I had some problems too but not exactly the same as that one.

When using the laptop 'mouse' pad i noticed that if you tap on the pad itself it thinks it is a button press, so it does things you dont expect to see happen. I ended up moving a whole folder to another location and it was hard to figure out where it went because it happened so fast. I think i got it back to normal now but not totally sure yet.

There are other stranger things though. Some folders are simply not visible through the normal Windows Explorer. Trying to navigate to those folders turns up nothing at all, while a program i have clearly finds them.

Also, i work with folders that can easily have 10's of thousands of files or even over 100 thousand (100000) or more files, up to maybe 200000 files. Trying to navigate INTO that folder with Windows Explorer can take many seconds as it tries to read the entire contents of the folder. It seems that it takes forever sometimes.

Also, when i go to copy those files to a backup thumb drive, even a fast USB 3.0 drive that can do over 100MB/second transfer, when the files are small like 20k each it can take several minutes, it can take a huge amount of time to copy all those files. I think that may be because it tries to update the directory record for each and every file as it copies each file to the drive rather than update it one time only. There may be other reasons too, but it's a big pain to have to wait all that time for just 1GB of data transfer when with a single 1GB file transfer it might only take 5 to 10 seconds. The smaller files could take 3 minutes to transfer.

 

When I went today into one of my projects folders that I haven't visited in a while, my entire folder structure is gone but all my project files are still there. All 4,000+ files are dumped into the parent project folder.

Having once suffered a catastrophic drive failure, that would have scared the crap out of me. Glad you powered thru it.

 

Hi MrAl,
If you go to the control panel and click on "folder options" then select "View" you can choose to have hidden files visible or hidden. There are many other things you can change about the way windows explorer works.

Les.

 

Hi MrAl,
If you go to the control panel and click on "folder options" then select "View" you can choose to have hidden files visible or hidden. There are many other things you can change about the way windows explorer works.

Les.

Hi there Les,

I should have mentioned that i already did that. I do that as soon as i install any Windows system.
That's why this was so strange to find out.

Do you have Windows 7 Pro or other? See if you can find your jump list folder(s) with Win Explorer.

 

Hi MrAl,
I am also using Windows 7 Pro. I don't know what the "jump list folder " is or where to look for it in the directory structure. One thing I do find annoying is the fact that very often when you create a file or folder with explorer it does not appear until you refresh the view of the folder.

Les.

 

Hi MrAl,
I am also using Windows 7 Pro. I don't know what the "jump list folder " is or where to look for it in the directory structure. One thing I do find annoying is the fact that very often when you create a file or folder with explorer it does not appear until you refresh the view of the folder.

Les.

Hi Les,

The jump folder is also called automatic destinations. It keeps a list of application uses so that when you right click on an app that shows on the task bar it shows you some of the last 'destinations' for that app. For example if you used Win Explorer to go to a folder "MyTexts" and "Pics" those two would appear on the list when you right click on the task bar for Win Explorer. You may have to have the app 'pinned' to the task bar though.

But anyway, here is the folder:
C:\Users\[UserName]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\AutomaticDestinations

Try navigating to that folder, see if it lets you do that on your machine. On mine it wont let me.
[UserName] is whatever name you are logged on with.

 

Hi MrAl,
I have never tried right clicking on items in the task bar before. I think it could be useful. I can get this far down the directory structure
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent items
The recent items folder contains shortcuts to files and folders that I have used recently.
I also tried doing a search starting at C:\ for "AutomaticDestinations" but it was not found.
I try to avoid putting files where Windows wants to put them under "Users" I like to keep all files relating to projects in the same folder so you don't have to go to one folder for schematics, another for text files and yet others for pictures, word documents etc.

Les

 

Hi MrAl,
I have never tried right clicking on items in the task bar before. I think it could be useful. I can get this far down the directory structure
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent items
The recent items folder contains shortcuts to files and folders that I have used recently.
I also tried doing a search starting at C:\ for "AutomaticDestinations" but it was not found.
I try to avoid putting files where Windows wants to put them under "Users" I like to keep all files relating to projects in the same folder so you don't have to go to one folder for schematics, another for text files and yet others for pictures, word documents etc.

Les

Hi,

Yeah pretty weird huh?

That folder is there though, but Win Explorer wont let us navigate to it.
If you could get to that folder you would see files that have names like:
"145e4577f34d435.automaticDestinations-ms"

and that holds the jump list for one application alone i think.

The folder:
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent

is a different folder than:
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent Items

The former holds the jump lists, the latter just holds recent items.
Why they do things like this makes no sense.
When they started using virtual folders they started messing things like this up with Win Explorer. There is one folder that if you stop it from being stopped from being viewed by Win Explorer (enable it for viewing) Win Explorer will see an endless set of folders all with the same name for some reason, until it reaches it's limit on the depth of it's ability to show folders. So if the folder name was "Folder" it would show:
C:\Folder/Folder/Folder

and if you click on that last Folder to open it it will then show:
C:\Folder\Folder\Folder\Folder

and any more clicks on that last one it just opens another, then another, etc.
MS acknowledged this problem and their only soluition was "dont enable that folder for viewing".
It was related to installing programs where the program would put the user folders under "User" or something like that.

But anyway, there may be other "super hidden" folders too.
I found that one because if the jump list files get corrupted then the jump lists dont work right and you have to get to that folder to delete those jump list files to start over again. This happened enough times now where i have to wonder how they could get corrupted in the first place, and so i made my own program to log certain things rather than depend on Windows to do it for me.

The 'extension' for those files are just"
.automaticDestinations-ms

which is strange too, why such a long extension.
The size of each file ranges from around 3k to about 1300k right now on my machjine.

 

Hi MrAl,
I have just found that I can navigate to
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
using the command prompt.
I have uploaded the output from the command prompt as a .txt file.
I have not tried uploading a text file before so I don't know if it will work.

Les.

 

Hi MrAl,
I have just found that I can navigate to
C:\Users\Les\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Recent
using the command prompt.
I have uploaded the output from the command prompt as a .txt file.
I have not tried uploading a text file before so I don't know if it will work.

Les.

Hi,

Ok cool, now try getting to the folder "AutomaticDestinations" that way. It may let you get there that way.
"CustomDestinations" may be another one too.

Just tried it, it works, but Win Explorer wont let me get there though.