Missing Files in Vista

>
> I know my way around computers pretty well. I have
> programmed in assembler, Fortran, later Cobol, and other languages. To
> this day, I still work in the technology industry. When it comes to
> computers, and technology in general, people seek me out for input and I
> generally always have the answer.
>
> I say this to make you aware that I am not a typical clueless home user
> poking away at the keyboard and hoping for the best. I say this also
> because what I am about to tell you will probably make as little sense
> to you as it does to me. Nonetheless, I hope that one of you may have
> the answer.
>
> About a year ago I purchased a HP Pavilion notebook, model dv2171cl. It
> came with XP Pro with a promised upgrade to Vista Home Premium, when
> available. When the upgrade became available I ordered it and waited
> until about last July to install it.
>
> Like many of you, I had acquired quite a bit of software over the
> years. This was software that I needed to rebuild my computer should I
> find myself re-installing Windows from scratch. Some of it was on CDs
> but a lot of it was downloaded updates and new versions of existing
> software. None of it was out of date, it was all XP era software. All of
> this software was stored on an external, USB attached, disk. It happens
> to be a Maxtor 500 GB drive. This was prudent, I thought, in the event
> my C:\ drive ever crashes.
>
> The day finally arrived when I decided enough time had passed that
> there would be sufficient experience with Vista out there that I would
> not be swimming alone. The install went smoothly and nothing seemed out
> of order. I did have to do a clean install since Home Premium will not
> let you do an upgrade. Since the install was clean, I had to re-install
> software I had stored on my external drive.
>
> I don't recall the exact sequence of events but at some point I
> connected the drive to my pc. At some point after that, I went to
> install software stored on my external drive. I swear I had not made any
> changes or modifications to the drive at all. I opened up Vista Explorer
> and navigated to my drive and the appropriate folders to begin
> re-installation. Guess what?
>
> The setup file was missing! I thought I was seeing things or made some
> sort of mistake, perhaps selected the wrong drive. I closed Explorer and
> tried again. Same thing. I tried another application and navigated to
> its folder. No setup files. In fact, _EACH_AND_EVERY_EXECUTABLE_FILE_
> stored on my external drive along with .dll, .ini, and .cfg files had
> vanished. Only the executables stored in zip archives were spared.
>
> I have managed to get by since I have several backups but I didn't
> manage to find my files until last night. I did a search on my external
> drive for \".exe\" and, lo and behold, they all showed up in what
> appears to be a restore point dating back to last July (when I upgraded
> to Vista). The restore point is located in one of two \"System Volume
> Information\" folders on the drive.
>
> The specific location is this:
>
> H:\System Volume
> Information\_restore{E5E4629D-F67A-49B3-B4CC-2A9B19E34103}\RP160
>
> It seems that Restore Point 160 is where Vista *-*** WITHOUT WARNING
> ***-* decided to stash all the software it didn't like and only left
> plain vanilla files (non-executables). To make matters worse, it renamed
> many of the files making it nearly impossible to know where they belong
> although, for some, the properties remain intact.
>
> My question is whether anyone else has experienced anything even
> remotely similar? I would also like to know what you did to retrieve
> your files? My concern here is that
>
> 1. my restore points won't go that far back
> 2. if they do and I perform a restore, I will have restored
> _EVERYTHING_ to that point in time
> 3. I don't know of any way to restore an individual drive, although
> that's my next research project.
>
> My guess here is that the issue may have to do with identities. Since I
> would have had one identity - and set of credentials - in XP and Vista
> would have assigned new credentials in a clean install, it may have
> decided it was going to eliminate any threat from an unknown set of
> credentials or identity. As I said before, a warning would have been
> nice. The same issue happens in XP, but XP doesn't pull this stunt. XP
> would not let you access another identity's files, even though they were
> yours, unless you went into a folder's properties and took ownership.
>
> Of course, all this happened when I first installed Vista and before I
> became fully aware of how security conscious (*PARANOID*) Vista is. I
> have since turned off all security \"enhancements\" Vista imposes on
> users.
>
> I hope the community can be of help and I do appreciate whatever input
> I can get.
>
>
> --
> JM24

> Some of it was on CDs
> but a lot of it was downloaded updates and new versions of existing
> software. . . . All of
> this software was stored on an external . . . disk.