My father has two USB sticks and asked me to copy the files onto my parents' PC. I started off with the first one, which, fortunately, didn't have important files on, and had problems.

I inserted the USB stick, and WinXP-SP3 went through the usual "find new hardware" routine, and then gave the "what do you want me to do" question. I said to open Windows Explorer, and am fairly sure that I didn't tick "do this every time". I didn't actually copy the files, but I opened one just to check it was OK. I then "safely removed" the USB stick.

Now, whenever I put the USB stick in, Windows Explorer opens automatically and shows no files at all. I tried creating a new folder in case it wasn't refreshing correctly. The new folder is now shown, but the files are still not there. The data are still there because My Computer shows that there is a lot of used space on the key.

I am sure that my parents' PC and the USB stick don't have any viruses on. From what I can tell having searched on t'internet, cases like this are usually due to damaged USB sticks, but, before I put the USB stick into my PC, I wondered whether anybody had any suggestions about recovering the files.

If I somebody had told me this sequence of events, I would have assumed that they just didn't know what they were doing and accidentally deleted the files. I assure you that I do know a bit about PCs, and I didn't do this.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Rob

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Thanks for that. I hadn't looked at Recuva because, for some reason, I stupidly thought it only worked on internal hard disks. I'll give it a go.

Unfortunately, Recuva didn't find anything, even with a "deep scan". Oh well, I hope the other, more important, USB stick is OK.