Sorcha (and Bill D.)

There are several pretty good programs for "unerasing" files, even after they're cleared from the trash bin. The problem is that it must be done before anything new is written to the drive. (And if you have to install the program after you've lost something, the installation may destroy some.)

If your techie has one of these programs, he may be able to get quite a lot off your drive, even if they were "deleted," although it's seldom 100%.

I'm guessing, but it's likely the "lossage" is probably related to trying to copy too many files at once. Windows Explorer has a "published limit" of 2GB as the "largest file" it can copy. That's pretty big, but if you're copying many files at the same time, the limit is somewhat (unknown) smaller, probably depending on both your RAM and temp file allocation and usage. Since it's likely the temp space (which includes caches) was "overdrawn" - the cause of the original problem(?) - the copy operation may have just puked due to lack of resources.

The icon "redraw" (Bill) happens fairly often, since the icons have to be in RAM to be drawn on the desktop. If the icon files have been "paged" out of RAM while you're doing something else - or if something else needs the "page-space" where they're currently held, they will be moved within/into RAM and have to be "reposted" to the desktop.

My inclination (remember this is "long-range" diagnosis) is to believe that the original problem is an "overstuffed" icon cache. Rebuilding the icons didn't work (maybe) because Windows will try to write the new cache pictures before it erases the old ones, and if the cache is already at the limit Windows allows, there won't be room to do the rebuild.

I suspect that the icon cache holds much more than the desktop icons, since "icons" are all over the machine. Win Explorer insists on putting an icon on each file, to show the filetype, and it loads the icons for all registered filetypes at boot. Cached thumbnails in directories that display them for graphic files can eat a lot of space, and may be stored in the icon cache. If the thumbnails are cached as icons(?) downloading a few image files could have crossed the "available space" line and caused the corruption.

Sorcha - If your techie wants to look at the article I referenced above on adding the MaxCachedIcons key, it should be posted at ZD.com soon. It wasn't up yet when I looked previously. The article is in the "Solutions" section of PC Magazine, titled "Registry Tweaks for Better Computing," by Neil J. Rubenking, starting on page 68 of the March 25, 2003 issue.

John