I know how you feel. I think my computer has a virus and I have messed with it for 2 days. Now I think I need to completely reinstall the operating system which will delete everything. Good luck on finding all your pattrns and everything else.

When they fixed it..they may have had to put in a new hard drive..that would be why you lost things..I always save everything I do on a back-up CD..however there is a way to transfer the things you want to new drive..call them and see if they still have your old one..I'm sooo sorry this happened to you !!!

I know how you feel. I lost a lot of stuff I had scanned. Luckily I still saved the paper copies. I was xferring everything on my desktop onto a thumbnail so my son could upgrade my computer. He said, "I'll do that." Yeah, right. Turned on my computer when he was finished and I'm not sure what all I'd lost. Now I keep everything in "My Documents" and just have shortcuts on my desktop.

I'm sending you condolences and a virtual box of Kleenex. I would be devastated.

my patterns are all pinted out and inbook form, but back up disc are the best way to save the program.

box.net and mosey.com has free online storage, no use to buy a external harddrives, put on disk etc. Picasa and Photobucket has free online picture storage. Picasa will upload all your pics for you. All these are free. If you pay for internet let it do all the work for you. Carbonite is not free, but inexpensive, everything is in one place and it backs up everything without you having to remember. I can access all my pics, files, bookmarks, music, games from any computer.

I am so sorry! I JUST went through this in June! I lost a lot of stuff, but one thing that saved my bookmarks was that I had created an igoogle page (very easy to do) and put most of my bookmarks there. That way they are saved on the web, not just on your computer and will be there if your computer crashes. There are other places that will store your bookmarks besides igoogle - ikeepbookmarks.com - portaportal.com (one of my favorites!) and of course, the My Pages here on this board. Good luck getting your bookmarks back! Hugs.

OMG! I feel for you! #@%!&^*!

I am not computer savvy so I cannot help in your retreival, but if you are anything like me, you will never live long enough to review all of the tutorials or make all of the patterns that you have saved. There are always new patterns on this site....and wonderful pictures of quilts. So if you remember any topics, I am sure taht other quilters would be willing to resend the info to you. Best of luck.

After reading your tragic scenario I went online and bought winzip for my PC. I backed up my favorites with all those patterns etc. in it to my exterior drive as well.
Now I can zip the files so that they don't take a lot of room and store them on the ED and I will be in good shape a couple of ways.

I hope all goes well for you and you get everything back. If there is something you are still missing in a tut or pattern, please ask me via PM. If I have it I will help you to have it back again.