Could anyone offer me advice on what may be the cause of my following problem.

I had my Live For Speed folder stored in my 'desktop' file, as it allows me to easily import setups and skins. The problem occured after/shortly after someone ran 'system restore'. My 'desktop' file had been completely wiped clean and there was no trace of anything being deleted in the recycle bin. Obviously this has caused me to lose Live For Speed, not to mention all my setups that I took ages tweaking. I have never come across anything quite like this. My first explanation was that it may have been a virus, although I do have AVG Free anti-virus installed and a scan showed that no viruses were found. I am in the process of re-installing LFS and am fully aware that I have lost one of my unlocks. Could anyone suggest what may have caused this problem so that this does not happen again. Any advice is appreciated.

1) Turn off system restore, have yet to see it do any good. Might as well get some HDD space.
2) Never put anything important on the desktop. Stick it somewhere safe and just put a shortcut to the folder/file on the desktop instead. I personally never put anything important on my C partition at all, so I can format the partition safely at a moments notice. Reinstall windows and your essential software, reimportant your bookmarks, re-import registry exports (saves reinstalling any games), and you're away.
3) You'll get your unlock back at the end of the month anyway.
4) If you ever lose a file, stop, do nothing except run a hard drive data recovery program. If you wait too long you are likely to over-write the data. It will likely require a different partition to recover the data to (at least that's how the program I use works). Of course installing such software could overwrite the data if it wasn't installed in preperation.

Quote from Eddster :

I had my Live For Speed folder stored in my 'desktop' file, as it allows me to easily import setups and skins....

You can do that much easier if you get Tweak ui and edit the locations you see in the save as dialog. I've set mine to Desktop, My Documents, My Computer, LFS's data directory and A download directory. Countless amounts of clicks saved

you might try this tool may help.

Thanks Bob and the rest for the quick responses.

On the note of this topic and what Bob said, I always did the same thing. I always partitioned the drive into 4 partitions, 1 for windows, 1 for applications, 1 for games, 1 for data files and downloads to keep. Same reason, I could reinstall windows (with stupid restore disks that came with off-the-shelf computers).

My question is, I'm now finally back on a decent PC with buying an Athalon 64 system. I have a 200 Gig harddrive, but no Windows CD. Windows is on a D: partition. First, being I'm new to XP, is there a way to get that to a CD? Second, does XP have a way of partitioning the harddrive without messing up the current windows install? I'd like to at least create 1 new partition to move all my data/downloads to so I can be safe that I won't loose them on a Windows reinstall. I'd like to partition without having to buy Partition Magic or something, or having to reinstall XP.

I just hate system recovery for one reason - it captures everything you do on your computer - it takes huge amount of space. Once I tried to recover the state of the system from one month earlier. Every single file I have written during that period was gone. Every program and every game. And everything I uninstalled was back on the disk. I recovered again to the state before the lucky recovery and everything was fine.

My question is : what the hell for XP keeps all the uninstalled files ???? I uninstalled them because I didn't want them ANY MORE.

Try the same thing.

Quote from Bob Smith :

Turn off system restore, have yet to see it do any good. Might as well get some HDD space.

System Recovery is more of a remote sysadmin tool imho, than something for home users. If you ever have to deal with a Windows XP laptop, which is the other side of the country (or out of the country) and has become disassociated from its Active Directory domain (i.e. it's totally screwed), you'll absolutely love it.

A user in this situation cannot deal with a lack of computer facilities for whatever reason (trust me, I hear this almost once or twice a month, if not more often if it's a core infrastructure issue - "I can't be without my computer/VPN access/email/<insert any other commonly used technology> today"). Either remotely connecting via RDP, or talking them into Safe Mode System Restore is a very quick way to get the system up and running - you could do it within 10 minutes, or 20 if you have to talk them through it. Next time they're in the office with their laptop, you can sort the issue properly.

Quote from himself :

My question is : what the hell for XP keeps all the uninstalled files ???? I uninstalled them because I didn't want them ANY MORE.

For example, if the user is given local administrator access, because they frequentely need to install software from whatever company they're visiting, it can give them the facility to remove vital bits of software. Now whilst most *good* Active Directory / other Domain Hierarchy aware systems will not allow them to do this without Domain Administrator rights, there is some software which does - certain software which when removed stops the whole laptop from working as required.

Quote from himself :

I just hate system recovery for one reason - it captures everything you do on your computer - it takes huge amount of space

Its configurable - you could set this to any size you wish, and indeed turn it off. No one is forcing you to run it. Granted I think most people would just format / reinstall and restart from scratch in this forum, but think of it from a professional system administrator's view.

All a corporate user cares about is everything Just Working(TM), and thats what System Restore is for.