Help!! I lost my pictures!!

[Nicola]

Hi Everyone,

Am new to the boards so if this has already been asked, I would be grateful if you could send me in the right direction...

We just got a new laptop with Windows Vista, and had all our pictures on a pen drive, we moved them over and saved them in the Crive 'Sample Pictures' folder in 'My Pictures' and changed the name of the folder. All was fine.

Last night, we tried to upload a video from the file to Youtube and it wouldn't let us, and came up with some sort of error message saying that the link on the file was not being used and could be deleted, did we want to, so we clicked 'OK'!! Big mistake!! The file disappeared into the abyss of the 'system'.

When I search the folder in the 'Recently Changed'it I can see the pictures, but they only show as Shortcuts to them, and when I ask the laptop to please please take me to folder they are in, it can't find it, it says the shortcut/link (whatever) has been moved/deleted. Is there a way I can put it back??

If not, this means I have lost all of my photos!! I checked the recycle bin and it isn't there...

Any ideas???

Nicola