Hello everyone! I am new in this forum, so I am sorry if I posted this in the wrong area or if I did anything wrong while posting this topic.
I am quite desperate here! I have a folder in my Desktops where I put all my Anime, and for each anime, I have anothe folder, so far I had a few Gigabytes of animes in there. Earlier today, I started to download an episode, and as usual I put it inside the Anime folder on my desktop, and then inside its folder (as I always do). When the download was finally finished,  I looked into my Anime folder and I saw that everything was gone! Except the anime file I just had downloaded!
I scanned my whole PC using Recuva, which didn't find any of my missing files and folders, I tried using "Start Search" which was able to find the shortcuts to my missing files, but did not find the files.
Does anyone know what could've happened?
Just in case you need to know this, my operational system is Windows Vista, and my internet browser was Google Chrome.
Thank you very much!Was this folder always a desktop folder ? ?
Are you the only User on this MACHINE or are there others ? ?The Anime folder has always been on my Desktop.
And I am the only user on this machine. ^^I don't know what extension those files have but if you do a *.___ whatever it is in the blank above search it will come up with ALL files of that type.

In other words if i wanted to find all text files on my machine i WOULD open search and type in *.txt....and HIT Enter.

Hopefully your files are still there...which i'm sure they are because a DLoad can't randomly remove files...anyways best of luck and i hope i haven't confused the issue.I tried that... It didn't find anything... The file types were .ram and some of them were .rmvb
I know the files are definitely gone from the folder, because it used to be about 6 Gigabytes and now its only 60 Megabytes.
Another thing I noticed (this might be a good thing), is that the memory space in my computer is still the same as it was before my files disappeared, can this mean  they still are around?
I really don't understand why or how this happened... I am absolutely sure I did nothing different, I did not mess with the files before the download or anything...Have you checked the recycle bin?ohh yes! That was the first place I checkedHave you opened Windows Explorer and looked in the folder to which the desktop shortcut is linked?So you did a search for *.ram ? ?
And *.rmvd ? ?

And it came up with nothing ? ?
I find that hard to believe.Allan: yes I have, no good though

patio: sorry about that, I did actually find the file shortcuts, but whenever I try to open them, a dialog box opens saying that the file locations were CHANGED, so I need to browse for them, or one that says that the file the shortcut REFERS to has been moved, so the shortcut doesn't work anymore. I attached both dialog boxes on this post.

[Saving space, attachment deleted by admin]I'd suggest deleting the shortcuts and re-running the search process...they have to be somewhere...note the text in the breadcrumb bar "Search results in indexed locations; try the "advanced search" option.Thanx BC...nice catch...We'll guys... Thank you very much for all your help, but I tried everything, and unless I am doing something really wrong while I am trying to search for the files, I really cannot find them anymore.
I deleted the short cuts, and still nothing...
The advanced search finds a lot of stuff, but not the files I am missing.
The only thing I would like to know is what could've happened? So I don't repeat the same mistake again.
Once more thank you very much.Years ago I encountered a system that had a virus which changed the extension of all media files. Have you run full scans with BOTH your AV and MalwareBytes?