Drive C looks empty but isn't

[sussertown]

My son has a laptop that boots to the desktop. The C drive shows size but no files. If I search for docs, as an example, they come up in the search window and open.

[CLiNT]

The drive isn't realy empty otherwise you would not be able to boot off it.
How are/were you initially attempting to view "C drive files".

Open Windows Explorer: Press the Windows key+E

[sussertown]

I needed a title. Empty Drive is the title. by virtue of the rest of my statement I am saying that the drive is not empty. My Computer/C empty. I assume he has some docs. My Documents on the start menu doesn't show any.

[tfspry]

..... If I search for docs, as an example, they come up in the search window and open.

In the Search window what is shown as the path to the doc?

[CLiNT]

I needed a title. Empty Drive is the title. by virtue of the rest of my statement I am saying that the drive is not empty. My Computer/C empty. I assume he has some docs. My Documents on the start menu doesn't show any.

Has he done any drive cleaning with a poorly written/configured batchfile, or potent registry prunning/cleaning recently?

The behavior your describing looks similar to the effects of some of the above.
Check the root folder locations in windows explorer for missing documents et al.


Apologies for the misunderstanding.

[sussertown]

A simple restore did the job. But I did find that My Documents still was empty until I removed the Hide attribute. thanks

[Dr. WEW]

A simple restore did the job. But I did find that My Documents still was empty until I removed the Hide attribute. thanks

I saw this same problem last night on a client's PC. It was caused by a virus infestation. It had set the hide attribute on just about everything in the Program Files folder and in the user folders in Documents and Settings. OS was XP SP3.