I certainly hope so - I'll be watchin' and waitin' like a hawk! In the meantime, I'm still scouring the internet for ideas and suggestions as to what might have caused this in the first place. That still remains a mystery that I'd really like to pin down so I can prevent it happening again.
I don't want to tempt fate, but so far, so good... Having now had a look back at the dates when files and folders were created on my system, I realise that NICK@NUMBER11's suggestion (on the first page of this thread) may well have solved my problem!! If that is the case then thank you so much NICK!! Also, if that is what cleared it up, I hope you don't mind if I ask how it worked in a technical sense and what I might be able to do to stop this happening again? (or at least make it less likely to occur). Many thanks again to all of you who helped me - I'm a newbie here and have been made to feel very welcome very quickly. Cheers to all of you!
Yup this happens to me too a lot, usually when I've not rebooted for quite some time. Logging off & then back on or killing & restarting explorer.exe usually gets it going again. Or, just hit "F5" every now and then. I think this is caused by a buggy 3rd party shell extension. Have you tried using ShellExView (nirsoft) to see what's hooking into explorer?
Your first point makes perfect sense to me - I feel like a fool not to have thought of that myself - I've had one hell of a lot of work on over the last few months and my computer has spent some very long stretches without a reboot. I've had a quick look at ShellExView - it certainly sounds interesting - is it a tool that your 'average user' could handle without causing too much damage?! I shall read up a little more - thanks luckman
Sorry that I did not see this sooner... I have answered this question on many another forum... You are victim of Windows new "virtualization" of files on the desktop! When you use "save as" within an app that is somewhat restricted (not running as admin), although it APPEARS to go to your desktop folder, it is in reality going to a VIRTUAL FOLDER... When you then look for it in Windows Explorer, you can't see it because it is in the VIRTUAL FOLDER and not where you are looking for it! To view the VIRTUAL FOLDER, you will need to navigate there: (typical path): C:\Users\{YOURUSERID}\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Virtualized\C Note: You may also need to set your FOLDER OPTIONS to view all files and unhide "protected OS files"! You will see a "whole new world" of files you never knew existed under that path!!
That's why I asked if he was using UAC, but he was saving documents to his user space, so they shouldn't be virtualized. IIRC, files are only virtualized if they are being saved to program files, the root folder of the drive or other protected areas.
So, in theory, with UAC disabled this should not happen? Also, if UAC is disabled, are applications therefore run as 'admin' by default? Forgive me if that is a foolish question but as the sole user of my machine I would like that to be the case. I ask this as in some articles I have read that there should never be only one user account and I am slightly confused how this affects 'permissions' on a one user machine.