Lost pictures in Picassa.

[conny]

My PC went belly up a few days ago. Gave me a warning a USB device had caused a problem and to 'click here'.
Unfortunately everything had froze and couldn't even do 'Ctrl,ALT, delete to raise Task manager, (Running XP Home Edition). After a lot of faffing about and removing everything except the monitor and keyboard sensor it re-started but when it did I got screen saying, 'Starting your Computer for the first time.'
It duly loaded up Windows and some of my own programs including Picassa but when I opened it there were no pictures only sample pics. I have searched everywhere on my computer to try and locate these pics but cannot find them. Even a restore didn't work because it was classed as a first time start up. Are there any programs available that will find them for me? Most of them are backed up but the last three months or so aren't and these ones contains pics of my latest grand daughter. ANY help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[dave.m]

Download and install Recuva:
http://www.recuva.com/

When you run it select either just pictures or just .jpg files or you could end up going through thousands.

If after it crashed, it went and reverted to factory settings, unfortunately you files may not even be still on the hard drive if it formatted automatically, but try Recuva first.

dave

 

[conny]

Thanks Dave,
just reloading my backup copy so I will know what ones are missing.
Thanks for your help.

 

[tim west]

conny, may be too late now but make sure you have one of those auto backup or sync programs for the future as I know its hard to remember to backup all the time, The one that came with my external HDD is brilliant and has helped recover files in the past.

 

[dave.m]

Thanks Dave,
just reloading my backup copy so I will know what ones are missing.
Thanks for your help.

Conny,
Only just seen your post but you may have blown it by reloading stuff, it will overwrite any deleted items.
If you delete an item, it stays on the hard drive until overwritten by other programs. All that actually happens when you delete something is the link to it from the registry is removed so that the computer cannot find it.

dave