please help with recovery

[geoss]

Yesterday while writing email to daughter, I wanted to send pic attachment, but the outlook exptress attach button would not work. To make a long story shory, a bunch of windows, "windows" kept opening on my screen. Somehow I lost the "MY Pictures" icon that I could access from my Start button. The My Pictures is totally gone, and all of my pics. Is there anyway to try to recover them? System Restore was not turned on:( Please help. Thanks
George

[gerbil]

...and these windows were of what, exactly? explorer windows? or internet explorer windows [why do i loathe this terminology..?] If they were explorer windows, were they of your My Pictures files? If you open My Computer > My Documents, do you see the folder My Pictures there? I assume you have checked the recycle bin... have you done a search for any of your picture files?
And one final question, why do you run with Sys Restore turned off? It does not take up that much space on your HDD, and you can readily clear old restore point files.

[geoss]

Now I regret not running System Restore. The folder My Pictures is not with Documents.does that help any? Is there anywhere I can look?
Thanks
George

[gerbil]

george, did u do as i suggested? search for a picture file that you remember the name of.. or at least part of... search for My Pictures... and meanwhile do not write any files to puter cos you could overwrite your pictures...

[gerbil]

george..this is a first step. Download this freeware to a floppy - it does not require installation to run, and if you dl it DIRECTLY to the floppy there will be minimal writing to the HDD, if any. Use it to search for your pictures. What file system is on your HDD? FAT, or NTFS?

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Download it to a floppy, unzip it to the same floppy, and run it from there. If it does not find them there is a better one available, but is much bigger and rewuires installation. It would be sweet to avoid that.
Tell me how you get on....