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[mister x]

boy do i need help!! :oops:
The other night i was dl'ing some files which, due to my 56k dialup connection, were going to take some time.I decided to let it download thru the night(nothing unusual, in fact normal practice in this household so as not to block the telephone line), but when i came to the PC the next morning the strangest thing had happened...quite a few(but not all..very random, no patterns )of my shortcuts, as well as certain folders were missing from the desktop!!
What has this got to do with SC i here you say ??....
well, and heres the critical part...my kids "converted DS files" as well as there "DS thingies"folder(skins /dpg.movies text files and zipped ds games etc)were gone....
we searched everywhere until concluding that they were indeed nowhere to be found....
So, GetDataBack software was used, resulting in me finding various DSQ and sav files....
however, as you may be aware, it seems all the names have been replaced with fairly bizarre looking names, none of which make sense....
But...the files are clearly dsq and sav files so i feel we are on the right track...as there are 2 matching files i deduced that these were the converted\patched files, so we tried them out with the trusty SC, but the numbers that run thru quickly upon loading are not moving at all....
We tried re naming them \adding .nds etc but to no avail....
Sorry for the longwinded background chaps...
:?: Question :?:
can anyone with a computing background shed some light on wtf(to put it bluntly) is going on, and more importantly, HOW TO FIX IT!!!??
How the files became deleted during the middle of the night(windows xp...was i hacked?!!!)remains of interest to me,BUT..
restoring the collection of DS files , collected over 9 months (using dialup...i know, i know...) has now reached epic proportions...all my hair has been pulled out\my fingernails are chewed to the bone and my wife says she thinks i have spent more than enough time dicking around in front of the PC, and need to get over it and move on(why oh why dont women get it?? :wink: )
So...as a last resort, i turn to the gurus on this site....please.
I know it is not the end of the world, and all that is lost can be slowly replaced, but first prize is fixing the above....
again, sorry for the sermon!!
X :oops:  :oops:

[bitblt]

well, and heres the critical part...my kids "converted DS files" as well as there "DS thingies"folder(skins /dpg.movies text files and zipped ds games etc)were gone....
we searched everywhere until concluding that they were indeed nowhere to be found....

Downloading ROMS won't hurt your PC.  It's possible one of the programs your kids downloaded corrupted the file system. Or the program you used to download ROMS. The problem might be a bad harddrive.  Is it a Maxtor harddrive? Anyway, if you are using XP and you have System Restore turned on you can try to roll your file system back to before the problem occurred.  Hopefully your harddrive isn't almost full.

[bonelessfish]

In my experience, when I see corrupted file names and directories on a hard drive it either meant the hard drive has crashed or I've been hit by a virus. Most viruses target specific files and folders so I doubt you got a virus designed to target your roms directory. I suppose if someone found a security hole in your file downloading program it's possible something came through your modem overnight but I am assuming you download your roms directly to where you convert them to. I'd be less suspicious of a virus since the problem is more likely that your hard drive had its head crash while writing to your roms directory. Try a scan disk to see if you have any corrupted sectors then try a virus scan. Lastly dump your DL program for a newer version or for a different program all together. I really doubt your kids would rename then delete your files since this requires some effort on their part and the result is not very fun but I don't know your kids. I haven't seen any funny issues with SCs convert program. Anything is possible when it comes to data integrity so remember to back up often. I hope this helps.

[mister x]

thanks for the replies ....
Nobody had touched the PC that fateful evening...both kids were in bed fast asleep, and are well behaved enough to know better...
definately something happened(remember i mentioned some shortcuts were missing too...)
Anyway, having received nothing but ,to my layman eyes at least,gobbledygook, i did a search and found more software retrieval software which allows you to search for specific types of files....
Naturally i looked for zipped files(we kept a folder with both unzipped ROMs as well as patched ones) and jackpot....or at least a 50% one...we reckon we found half of them, so all was not(literally)lost!!
No idea what make the hard drive is bitblt, and we tried the system restore facility, which resulted in empty folders with no ROMs in....
I'm going with the virus theory...


I am now running ZoneAlarm....which picked up quite a few issues!!