Empty Program Files folder....!

[Zelandakh]

OK, wierd one for you.

User has Win98SE on a clone box (self build). P III 866, 128MB, 40GB hard disk, DVD etc. Nice machine. Award BIOS but not sure which motherboard.

User doesn't touch machine for a while it blanks the screen and stuff - exactly standard.
User doesn't touch machine for over an hour, it goes to standby. When it comes off standby, contents of "Program Files" and "My Documents" are gone. Yet standby is disabled.

run lines are empty, there is no autoexec.bat or config.sys, bin is empty, norton can't find anything to undelete, registry has no entries in run, runservices or other usual places.

It doesn't appear to be a virus, I can't find a virus that does this, but this PC has now suffered 5 times.

Any apps not in those folders work fine and Windows runs although IE and other apps from Prog Files obviously won't.

What gives? Anyone seen this before? Note - some of this info comes from the (entry level) user!!!

 

[edfair]

Sounds like a section of the hard drive is going to sleep.
Can you put a scandisk on a section of the disk that isn't affected and try running it from there? Or a diagnostic of some sort?
Or how about trying a long term heatup with DOS booted , from a floppy if neccessary? Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[AustinPowers]

Hello Friend,

You did not say whether this problem existed from the start or just recently developed. If it existed from the time it was built, you might want to upgrade the system BIOS. Open up the case and you will most likely find the manufacture/model # on the mobo. If problem develops at later time and you know BIOS is current, look into both Windows and system BIOS' Power Management configuration to see whether any settings have changed inadvertently ....

Yeah, Baby!
AP

 

[CapsMan]

Check bios settings again, I think its a prob there!
Failing that try stealth:
It may be a user added prog which deletes stuff to stop user tracking or a badly installed prog.
Save time: Create a backup folder and stick a copy of windows folder, autoexec.bat, config.sys, etc. into it, for drag/drop/copy.

CapsMan