Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Missing file consuming 5.3GB HD space!

Apr 3, 2004 4:25AM PST

My PC has a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 processor with an 80GB Western Digital master hard drive and a 120GB WD slave hard drive and 512MB SDDDR RAM. I run Windows XP Home Edition. It is about 18 months old. I will try to keep to the facts but need to provide some detail so please excuse if this runs a little long.

To the point is that I had a folder on my master hard drive that held 5.3GB of digital photos. That folder is no longer accessable (access denied). Furthermore, when I hover my mouse over that folder, Windows reports that the folder is empty and using no HD space.

I managed my digital photos with a program that came with my Canon photo printer called Zoombrowser EX v3.3. When that program is installed, the default folder for uploaded images is found here: C\program files\canon\zoombrowser ex\image library one\my images. Specific info on the images (including that which allows the viewing of thumbnail versions of the actual images) is stored in a database file in the zoombrowswer ex directory. I noticed my problem the other day when I was attempting to change the name of one of my image folders (working within the zoombrowswer ex program). I kept getting error messages that said I could not change the name of the folder. Upon further investigation, I navigated to the directory on my hard drive where the images are actually stored (the "my images" folder referenced above) and when I got there, the folder reported empty! Of course, I was still able to view thumbnails of the images as those come from the database, not the actual image files. The fact that the actual image folder was missing would explain why I could not change its name. Since I keep backups of all of my data, I wasn't too worried about the missing files as I would be able to restore them relatively easily. However, I was puzzled as to how they got deleted in the first place. This still remains a mystery to me. However, my plan was to restore the images from my backups to the "my images" folder but when I double clicked that folder, I got an "access denied" message. I then tried to delete the folder and got a message saying the folder could not be deleted and I was to make sure the it was not write protected or being used by another program. I went into the properties of the folder and made sure it was not "read only" and tried again with same results. I was running some desktop wallpaper from images in that folder so I changed that to standard Windows wallpaper thinking that might be the program accessing the files. Still unable to delete the folder. I decided to uninstall the Zoombrowswer EX program and reinstall it. I renamed the "image library one" folder (which contains the "my images" folder) to "image library one old" to avoid conflict when I reinstalled the program. I was able to reinstall successfully but this time, instead of allowing the program to make the "image library one\my images" folder the default, I chose to put my pictures in folders in the "my pictures" folder of "my documents". I thought that maybe some of the problem was that I was storing images in a folder in the program folder of the software. Anyway, on the surface, all seems well. The program is reinstalled and my images are all recognized by the program and they reside in "my pictures" instead of the root directory of the Zoombrowswer EX program. Here is where my problem really is.........

Before this all happened, my master hard drive had used 31GB of 80GB (this included the 5.3GB of digital image files). When I put the pictures back onto the HD and now check my available HD space, Windows reports that I have used 36.3GB! To me this would indicate that the original file containing the 5.3GB of data is still on my hard drive somewhere. I am unable to delete the folder that contained those images as access is denied. Furthermore, that folder is reporting empty anyway. I have used the "search" function of Windows XP to seach for specific file names that were in that folder (in hopes of finding the directory where the images got moved to) and the only ones that are reported are the newly restored versions in the "my pictures" folder. I have also searched by file size and it is not reported either. I ran the XP version of Scandisk (I think it's called checkdisk) and told it to automatically fix errors and to look for bad sectors. The scan ran and did not report any errors. I ran a virus scan using McAfee viruscan 7 with updated DAT files and that also came up negative. I defragmented. I started in SafeMode and tried to delete the "my images" folder but my access was still denied.

This is the strangest thing I have ever come across. It is clear to me that I has "lost" 5.3GB of hard drive space and that it is the result of the mysterious dissappearence of my digital photo images in the "my images" folder. I've been hoping that if I could somehow delete that "my images" folder, I would regain the HD space (even though Windows reports the folder as empty). But, nothing I have tried thus far will let me delete it. Not to mention the fact that deleting this folder might NOT recover the lost space. Using "search" for various (known) file names has come up empty (except for listing the restored versions) and even searching for folder names (instead of files names) gives similar results. Obviously, something is not quite right here.

Does anyone have any ideas of what I might do/try next? My computer is running fine, the Zoombrowser EX program is reinstalled and recognizing my restored images from the "my pictures" folder and maybe I should just leave well enough alone. However, It is clear that I have 5.3GB unaccounted for and I don't know why my access is denied when I try to enter or delete the old image folder.

Thanks for your time in reading this extended call for HELP!

Larry

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:Missing file consuming 5.3GB HD space!
Apr 3, 2004 6:45AM PST

Larry,

Just a thought here....Maybe the space is being used by "System Restore" and SR continues to maintain the backup of those pictures. If everything is running fine and you're not having any problems, try temporarily disabling System Restore, using the instructions below. After disabling System Restore, clean out the Temporary Internet Files folder, delete all ".tmp" files on the computer, then run Chkdsk/Error Checking and Disk Defrag to optimize the hard drive. After that "re-enable" System Restore by reversing the prodedure below. It should give you some space back:

To disable Windows XP System Restore:

1. Click Start.
2. Right-click on the ?My Computer? icon, and then click Properties.
3. Click the "System Restore" tab.
4. Check "Turn off system restore" or "Turn off system restore on all drives". Click on Apply, etc.

Hope this helps.

Grif

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Missing file consuming 5.3GB HD space!
Apr 3, 2004 7:23AM PST

Certainly worth a try, thanks! I forgot to mention in my initial post (hard to believe, huh?) that I had removed all but the last restore point during my attempts at fixing this. However, I did not "disable" SR. Those pictures could be in the backup that includes the last SR point. I'll let you know what happens. Still bugs that the pictures were lost in the first place. Assuming that file is in the system restore, maybe I will be able to delete the folder once that is cleaned up.

Thanks again.....

Larry

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Missing file consuming 5.3GB HD space!
Apr 3, 2004 11:30AM PST

Thanks for the advice, Grif, but no luck. It did free up 400MB but a far cry from 5.3GB. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Larry

- Collapse -
Re:Re:Re:Missing file consuming 5.3GB HD space!
Apr 4, 2004 5:42AM PDT

Rxplsb3,

In addition to Cursorcowboy's good information below, I have found that you can frequently delete "undeletable" files or folders simply by opening the "command prompt" window while in Windows, (click on Start-Run, type "cmd") then use DOS commands to delete the file/folder.

Hope this helps.

Grif

- Collapse -
''Deleting''
Apr 3, 2004 9:54PM PST

1. The article [Q320081] explains why you may not be able to delete a file or a folder on an NTFS file system volume and how to address the different causes to resolve this issue.

2. The Windows Recovery Console can be used to obtain limited access to NTFS, FAT, and FAT32 volumes without starting Windows, [Q314058].

3. Otherwise, please read Doug Knox's tip, "How do I delete an "undeletable" file?."