I have had this happen once before, I am running Windows 8 on an OCZ Vertex 4 SSD.
The problem is that suddenly all my files inside all the directories and sub directories in my Documents folder have been moved to the root of Documents and have all been named with their original directory location in the filename. To give a clear example: a file originally located in Rockstar Games\L.A. Noire\settings.ini is now in my root Documents folder under the name Rockstar Games_L.A. Noire_settings.ini
All of the folders and sub-folders in my Documents are empty and all of the files are in Documents with those names. They all follow the pattern of having the directory in the filename separated by underscores (_). I am looking for the issue that caused this and the solution on moving the files to their original location. I have over 11K files now sitting in my Documents and all my programs that require files in my Documents folder are now broken.
I have no answers, but the documents folder in libraries, as I understand it is links/copies (not sure which) of what is in c:/users/user name/my documents (these are, as I understand it the real files) -- are those files messed up as well?
The Documents library shows all files in C:\Users\Jesse\Documents which is where they are located. All the files are messed up but the folders are all fine.
Unless changed by you, by default your "Documents" library includes everything in your "C:\Users\(user-name)\Documents" and "C:\Users\Public\Public Documents" folders. They are displayed together in the library.
How did you want your "Documents" library sorted or grouped by instead?
It sounds like you may want to also set the library to Group by -> Folder path instead??
My Public Documents folder is empty so I thought it pointless to point out it was also included. The problem is inside Documents. I do not want my folder sorted or grouped, I want them moved back to their appropriate folders and renamed to their original names without all the folder location information in front of the original filename. Sorting or grouping by folder path does not help as it's already organized alphabetically which also sorts it out by its' relevant path as the path names are in the filenames themselves.
How does it look in your C:\Users\(user-name)\My Documents folder compared to the library?
Could you post a screenshot showing how you would like it to look instead? I'm having a hard time trying to visualize what you are describing, and this would help.
My Documents folder is what's being displayed in the image I posted above. Whether I show Documents from Libraries or C:\Users\(user-name)\My Documents folder it's showing the same stuff because it's grabbing files from the same location. The way it's supposed to look is all those files you see should be in folders as they were this morning. For example, the file Cobalt_config.cfg shouldn't be in Documents, it should be inside the folder Cobalt which is a sub-folder of Documents and the file should just be called config.cfg. Instead the folder Cobalt is empty and the files were for some reason moved to the Documents directory and renamed.
EDIT: For me to fix this manually, I would have to move each of the 10,800 files back to their original folder and rename them deleting everything but the last part of their name.
Ok. I got you now. Do you remember what you or anything related may have done right before this happened that could be a possible cause for the files to move out of the folders like that?
I'm not sure how you'll be able to fix this other than manually.
I was chatting with a mate over Steam, my network adapter was acting a bit flakey so I shut down the computer and booted it back up and noticed that RainMeter couldn't find any files so I checked my Documents folder and realized what had happened. As a lot of the files were in use prior to shut down they could have only been moved when I was booting up or shutting down. I am assuming that Windows has made a mistake trying to read or write to the directory. There were no speed issues shutting down or booting up so I'm amazed that they could be all moved so quickly, it makes me think that it has something to do with how Windows manages file locations. I believe Windows botched something, causing them to be read in the wrong format which to the end user puts them all in the wrong folder and it was saved that way.
I have tried a couple times to restore to a few different points, I tried recovering with AV disabled and tried in safe mode as well, I continue to get this error when attempting to recover.
I was thinking the same thing, it's a bit late tonight so I will pursue this in the morning. Should the same error pop up even after AV removal are there other steps I should try? A bit of googling and I came across someone suggesting to unhide system protected files and make all files non read-only, but that seems a bit dangerous to me to make all files non read-only as in my experience some programs require certain files to remain read-only.
I wouldn't recommend doing that. I don't think it would be related to your issue.
If it still has the issue after a system restore, then it looks like you may need to manually copy them all back if you don't have a system image to restore.
If it is clean, create a backup image of its current state just in case.
You could write a script (or get a friend to write one) to move the files back to their proper locations.
One of the members here should be able to do it.
I had a similar problem recently when I installed MusicBee (to try it out).
I couldn't figure out how to create a playlist, so I dropped an existing playlist (from Winamp) onto the window (Big Mistake).
MusicBee helpfully moved every file in the playlist (~7600) to a new location!
My friend wrote a php script, which read the playlist file and moved all but 12 files back to their proper locations.
Instead of spending several days manually moving the files, the problem was solved in about 3 hours.
Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64 bit), Linux Mint 18.3 MATE (64 bit)
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PC/Desktop
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n/a
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AMD Phenom II x6 1055T, 2.8 GHz
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ASRock 880GMH-LE/USB3
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ATI Radeon HD6450
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Realtek?
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Samsung S23B350
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1920x1080
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Western Digital 1.5 TB (SATA), Western Digital 2 TB (SATA), Western Digital 3 TB (SATA)
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Tower
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Wired Optical
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Linux Mint 16 MATE (64 bit) replaced with Linux Mint 17 MATE (64 bit) - 2014-05-17
Linux Mint 14 MATE (64 bit) replaced with Linux Mint 16 MATE (64 bit) - 2013-11-13
Ubuntu 10.04 (64 bit) replaced with Linux Mint 14 MATE (64 bit) - 2013-01-14
RAM & Graphics Card Upgraded - 2013-01-13
Monitor Upgraded - 2012-04-20
System Upgraded - 2011-05-21, 2010-07-14
HDD Upgraded - 2010-08-11, 2011-08-24,
You could try to manually copy the files to the correct location and use an advanced rename freeware to remove the added parts of the file names. Still quite some work though. Or the script as suggested.
Why the files moved might not be solved I guess, its a windows thing.
Check the created or modified date and time of a few of the files to see if you can tell when exactly they moved. Then look at the event viewer at that time and see if anything weird happened.
It just seems so organized, like it's not an error or malfunction, but something a program was told to do.
I know there's a line you can paste into CMD that will do pretty much the same thing that' happened to you. But you can't undo it.
Upon removing BitDefender Total Security 2013 I was able to successfully perform a system restore, however my Documents remained unaffected as it also mentioned would happen during the procedure. I am pretty good with PHP so I have decided to begin writing a script to move the files to their correct folders via that method.
The files have the correct modified dates, they were - according to windows not moved.