Permanently deleted files

[mamafrog]

I have windows 2000 and 2 user files disappeared. the computer says they were permantly deleted but my harddrive space is just the same so i know they are there. can somebody tell me how i can find them?

[patio]

What type of files were these ? ?
Do you know how or in what manner they were deleted ? ?
Have you tried to locate them using Windows Search ? ?
You don't neccessarily need the entire filename for this to work but it would be helpful.
Are there multiple user accounts setup on this machine or just one ? ?

Please answer all the above as much as you can as there may be different recovery options...

p.s. The HDD space isn't going to show a noticable change with only 2 files...unless they were both 5 hour movies

[mamafrog]

there are 4 users on my computer. they were the entire files the faves the documents with pix and other downloads the settings the whole thing. it's like windows restarted the screen from scratch. i have know idea how they were deleted and i have searched from them. i have typed in everything i can think of to find them.

[patio]

Do you mean you have lost the entire My Documents directory for a user ? ?

[mamafrog]

i lost everything for 2 users. their favorites their documents and their saved settings

[Computer Hope Admin]

Favorites and documents are not anything that would be deleted by themselves unless you deleted the users accounts the files were associated with. It's also possible they were corrupt and removed by a disk utility program, deleted by malware or viruses or mistakenly deleted by you or another user.

My suggestions for recovering deleted files are found in the below document.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000342.htm