Recovering a disappearing folder

[eespinosa]

Hello all. Hoping I could get some assistance here. My wife's laptop is running Vista Home. This morning, I installed an antivirus program while on her administrative side. All went well. I updated the definition files and let it scan. I locked out the keyboard. Hours later, when she tried to get on, the laptop randomly shut down. she brought it back up and went looking for some pictures (she's a photographer). She could not find them. A folder is over 1000 pictures had disappeared. She is obviously devastated.

We tried a system restore, but that did not help. Not sure why that specific folder disappeared, so that is troubling in itself. Any suggestions out there for possibly recovering her work? Thank you all in advance.

[Train]

Maybe a bad sector on the hdd.
chkdsk /f /r
Might be able to recover them.

Here are some excellent freeware file recovery programs, many of our members have had a good deal of success with them:

PC Inspector

Restoration

TestDisk

Recuva

I like Recuva best out of those.

Might even want to remove the hdd and slave it into another computer.

[eespinosa]

Maybe a bad sector on the hdd.
chkdsk /f /r
Might be able to recover them.

Here are some excellent freeware file recovery programs, many of our members have had a good deal of success with them:

PC Inspector

Restoration

TestDisk

Recuva

I like Recuva best out of those.

Might even want to remove the hdd and slave it into another computer.

Thanks. I'll give those a try or even slave the hdd.

[eespinosa]

I tried Restoration and Recuva. Neither helped. I used the paid version of Recuva. I then tried chkdsk. No dice. I ran sfc after...no dice. Not sure what else to try. Still wondering why a picture folder would seemingly be targeted to be removed randomly without human interaction. Very sentimental pictures were lost. @Train ...would removing the hdd and slaving it to another computer increase the odds of recovery?

[Train]

It well could help.

THERE HAVE BEEN A COUPLE NASTIES floating around over the years that did remove the graphics like that.
So make sure the computer you are going to use has all the windows updates and antivirus up to date, because you will want to do a virus scan before you open that drive.