Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Forum

Scott,

I recently made a really stupid mistake by running chkdsk /f on a non-system
drive. I didn't read the message that indicates that the drive would be
dismounted and all open handles to the volume would be invalid. I said yes
to this, and now I can't open many of my picture files. How do I unscrew
this?

Thanks for your help.

You could try the Unlocker program: http://www.emptyloop.com/unlocker

Other things to try: make sure the Windows file association for that
particular file extension is correct. Try copying the folder containing the
files to another folder, then open them from the new folder. Try copying the
files individually, giving them a different name during the copy (i.e. copy
file1.jpg file2.jpg).

Copy the files to another drive, reformat the problem drive, and then restore
the files. Note that if you were using FAT32 then I recommend you change to
NTFS, it is much more robust and less problematic.

Let me know if any of these suggestions help, or if you figure out an
alternative solution.

Scott,
I tried the unlocker program, but the program did not indicate that the files were locked. When I tried to open the picture files with any picture-reading program, a message said that the file system could not find the file. (The icons were not corrupted, and looked normal.) Also, I was not able to copy, move or rename the files, and the unlocker program was not able to move the files at bootup. Apparently, the operating system is confused about where the files actually are. The program that opens the files will open, and I will get the red x icon, but no picture. For what it is worth, when I ran chkdsk /f, I stopped the command within about 2 seconds. What would you suggest at this point?

Re-run CHKDSK /F and this time *do not* stop it! Stopping it is in fact what caused the original problem - note the Warning here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314835


You might have to restore from backup if the files and/or file system is truly hosed. Let me know how it turns out. Scott.

Scott,
It seems that the only files affected are the picture files, and I have run chkdsk /f both from within a command prompt and at bootup, but no change. The files are still inaccessible and unmovable as well as un-copyable. Is there a program out there that will remedy this?

If you don't have any backups(!), then recovery programs like the following may do the job:

Recover It All - http://www.dtidata.com/recover_it_all.htm
Advanced NTFS Recovery - http://www.ntfsrecovery.com
EasyRecovery - http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoverydatarecovery
Stellar Phoenix - http://www.stellarinfo.com/recover-windows-nt.htm
GetDataBack NTFS - http://www.runtime.org

These can scan the drive looking for the original data structures and possibly recover the files. Here is an article with tests of some of these types of programs:

How To: Recover Your Deleted Files
http://www.maximumpc.com/2006/02/how_to_recover.html

If none of those work then you can send the drive to a data recovery company like ActionFront http://www.actionfront.com or DTIdata http://www.dtidata.com

Let me know how it all works out. Scott.

Scott
Thanks for the advice. I had backups of the pictures, however scattered about on 3 drives, and was able to recover. However, I will take note of the programs you suggested, because I know one day I will face this again.