sooo, my wife used the Settings->software->uninstall in WinXp to uninstall "Syberia 2" Then she noticed it took quite long. Then she noticed there was a LOT of free drive space. Then I noticed, about 2/3 of the contents of the Folders in my /Games folder has gone. (100GB) Funny enough, all the folders are still there, but the content is gone. The games are still insalled (as far as windows/registry is concerned) which makes reinstalling a pain in the *** Nothing too important vanished. All save games that were not within the /games folder are still...somewhere (wherever on the C: drive they're hiding, found most of them) The only real miss is that it also emptied my Steam folder, and most Steam gemes save inside the Steam folder (under /Steamapps) What could have caused this? (I've done a complete Virus- and Rootkitscan, nothing. Appearently the uninstaller of "Syberia 2 " just fired a broadside?
I have seen old installers do this (once). I used to install all my games to C:\ for some reason. Assuming that they'd build their own subfolders. One day, one uninstaller just went "I'll just go and delete everything in this here folder where I am installed"... and did just that (or tried... ) No idea what (besides s*** coding) does that...
Damn that sucks, I dont think it was a vius or something and its more probably what BentAnat said, the uninstall coding o the game just says "delete everything under this folder" and that was it, wich it sucks. The best way to go its alwasy to creat a subfolder for everygame, so any of the uninstall does such a thing like this
Yeah, that's what she said she did but what did she actually do? Can't you just go to a restore point, it sounds like it's just deleted stuff.
Use a recovery program. Like adidan says, it sounds like it is just deleted. I recovered my whole media drive thanks to those wonderful un-delete Progs
There is no standard for installers. There are general similarities however. A good installers will remember all the files it creates and all the registry entries it creates. A Good uninstallers will use the list created by the install and delete all listed leaving behind any thing the installer did not create. A bad installer won't keep a list of the files/registry entries created and the bad uninstaller will delete every thing in the directory the program was placed. A particularly badly written/tested uninstaller might erase more than it should.
I stepped down THAT road and it wasn't a wise choise All Games are off course in their own, seperate directories, I've made that crystal clear the one time she managed to NOT put a game in a seperate directory. . .. ... Wait. . May that one time WAS Syberia 2 F*ck I'll try running an undelete program, but frankly, I never found a good one (for free that is). Can you recommend one? Remember back when XP was new and it sometimes killed itself while creating restore points? That's when I turned that feature off.
Ahh, hope you remembered to duck I see... Maybe a tad tricky then unless there is a good free undelete program out there. Never used one myself TBH.
+1, just make sure you have a spare drive to copy the rescued files to and don't write on the drive with the lost data until you do.
Pandora Recovery 2.1.1 is a sweet program to try also. I have had the odd files go missing in the past and this helped me a lot! Just a case of finding where the lost files have gone which is not very easy.
Thanks a lot! Off course, when I started Steam to discover the loss, it automatically reinstalled itself in the old folder, so the data's bust anyway. Ah, well, nothing serious, just savegames from games I wasn't going to play anymore anyway (as I had finished them)
I've had this before as well, for me it was with the Sierra uninstaller for the original Half-Life. It started deleting everything off my C:\ drive including a lot of files inside the Windows folder causing the system to fail to boot.
