Folder Contents Invisible - Fixed

Basic problem: My documents folder apears empty, i cannot get a directory listing for it. However i can open my documents/folder perfectly fine and its contents display perfectly.

in cmd window: cd command will navigate to the folder but dir command returns file not found
Haven't installed anything recently, only using pc for brief web browsing/email at min since i'm staying at my parents.

Already checked:
chkdsk - fine
virus scanner - fine
spybot s&d - fine
adaware - fine

using XP sp3, spec in sig

edit: Folder view is set to display hidden and system files btw

 

Are you sure that you are navigating to the correct users (ie. your) my documents folder?

 

i'm the only user and its not set up in documents and setting/user its set to e:/documents

e:/documents appears empty but e:/documents/downloads for example opens fine

 

that happened to me in a different kind of way. I can make my documents hidden but when I check to have ALL UNHIDDEN items visible, they still don't appear.

 

Nice idea, but i have hidden files visible everywhere else on my pc and i can see them. Also they still don't apear in dos when i enter dir /A

Thanks anyway.

I didn't even think this was possible, has anyone got a clue as to how this could happen?

 

I'd suggest creating a different user, with full access, and seeing if that helps - you could've just had screwy user permissions...

 

No luck with that... I'm gonna see if linux can see the files

edit: Nope, and the ls command in the terminal window got an input/output error... Looks like its most likely an NTFS indexing error... now i need to find a way to recover it.

I have managed to remember the file names of the most important files and open them so not too much panic

 

If you can open files by name, have you tried an xcopy (or xxcopy) to somewhere safe using *.* and the switch to copy all sub-folders?

 

Before anything else: have you tried chkdsk/scandisk on the drive yet?

Sounds like the classic example of a slightly corrupt filesystem to me

 

I fixed it now fsck in linux found the error, the NTFS index was corrupt. All fixed now. Strange that chkdsk didn't find anything wrong though.

thanks for the help peoples