Win 7 not displaying all the files in a folder

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I’ve had Win 7 (Pro) on a new and otherwise healthy computer for about 6 months now. I noticed a few weeks ago that “My Computer” is not displaying all the files in a folder (and the names of all the sub-folders). Sometimes I can see the files in My Computer but when I open an application, the open files dialog box can’t see all the files/folders. Winzip is the biggest culprit but I can replicate this in WordPerfect, Word, Excel, and other programs. Sometimes I can see a file in an application but it doesn’t show up in My Computer. I have a 1 Terabyte hard drive but haven’t been able to find any reference to how many files can be in a folder. None of these paths are more than 256 characters.

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the number of entries in a folder? When I moved some files to a subfolder, I could then see the remainder of the files in that folder, including ones that didn’t appear before I moved the files. There were less than 200 files in that folder and I could only see about 100 of them. I’ve never seen anything like this before and I’m at a loss to figure out what’s going on. I’d appreciate any tips.

Thanks in advance,
Jan

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In the File Open dialog, is “All Files” (in the drop-down right above the Open button) selected or only a specific file type or set of file types?

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In the File Open dialog, is “All Files” (in the drop-down right above the Open button) selected or only a specific file type or set of file types?

Inside applications, yes, “all files” is option chosen. That isn’t an option in Windows Explorer or My Computer because I’m not trying to open anything. The files just don’t show up no matter what view I’m using. No matter what is selected inside applications or in My Computer though, folders should appear and some of them don’t show up either.

Any other ideas?

Jan

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Inside applications, yes, “all files” is option chosen. That isn’t an option in Windows Explorer or My Computer because I’m not trying to open anything. The files just don’t show up no matter what view I’m using. No matter what is selected inside applications or in My Computer though, folders should appear and some of them don’t show up either.

Any other ideas?

Jan

have you check for any malwares or something? what is the specs of your pc?
when was the last time this happens? are there any softwares you can remember been installed before this thing happen?

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have you check for any malwares or something? what is the specs of your pc?
when was the last time this happens? are there any softwares you can remember been installed before this thing happen?

I run a nightly scan for viruses and malware and it comes up clean. This is an HP desktop with 4 Gb of RAM (new in February) and a 1 terabyte hard drive. It came with Win 7 Home and I upgraded it to Win 7 Pro. This started happening a few weeks ago and at first I thought I had misplaced or deleted a file here and there. I finally noticed exactly what was going on when I unzipped some files and placed them in a new folder. When I used Explorer to go look at that folder, I couldn’t see it. So I went back to Winzip and tried again. This time it didn’t show the new folder but said that the folder already existed so I couldn’t create it again. I even rebooted thinking that would help and it didn’t. I couldn’t see the new folder. I ended up creating new folders with 3 different names and none of them showed up. I finally extracted the contents of that zipped file into an existing folder and found the files. Then, yesterday, when I was looking for something else, I opened Windows Explorer and all three of those other folders were visible. There just doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what shows up and what doesn’t.

I don’t install anything on this machine unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e., windows updates). It has Office 2003 (so I can use Outlook) and WordPerfect 14 so I can do real work; Carbonite for back up. The main purpose of the machine is for digitizing embroidery designs so I have specific software for that however all of these have been on the machine since I bought it. I truly can’t identify one piece of software that was installed when this started happening.

Could this be an indexing problem with Win7? Or is there a limit to the number of files that can be in any one folder?

Thanks,
Jan

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Have you checked the event viewer to see if there are errors being logged?

Joe

--Joe

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Have you checked the event viewer to see if there are errors being logged?

Joe

That just opened up a whole new can of worms. The Event log service won’t start and the error is: Error 4201: The instance name passed was not recognized as valid by a WMI data provider.

I found loads of references to this but none that fix the problem so I can’t see if any applications are generating errors. Now I’m off to see if I can find a solution for this!

Jan

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That just opened up a whole new can of worms. The Event log service won’t start and the error is: Error 4201: The instance name passed was not recognized as valid by a WMI data provider.

I found loads of references to this but none that fix the problem so I can’t see if any applications are generating errors. Now I’m off to see if I can find a solution for this!

Jan

I found the solution and got the Event viewer going. I don’t have any error messages that would explain this. However I’m pretty convinced now that WinZip is the culprit. I just used Winzip to unzip a set of files. While in the dialog box to extract files, I created a directory and extracted the files to that directory. Actually, I did it three times – two new directories and then also extracted the files to an existing directory. I can’t see any of these in My computer – the folders or the files. I even opened a DOS window and they don’t show up there either. The only place I can see them is when WinZip is open. I used Winzip’s open file dialog box to check and the attributes seem normal (not hidden, not read only) and it says I have complete control in the security tab.

I’ll go post a request for support with WinZip – but has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Thanks,
Jan

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I found the solution and got the Event viewer going. I don’t have any error messages that would explain this. However I’m pretty convinced now that WinZip is the culprit. I just used Winzip to unzip a set of files. While in the dialog box to extract files, I created a directory and extracted the files to that directory. Actually, I did it three times – two new directories and then also extracted the files to an existing directory. I can’t see any of these in My computer – the folders or the files. I even opened a DOS window and they don’t show up there either. The only place I can see them is when WinZip is open. I used Winzip’s open file dialog box to check and the attributes seem normal (not hidden, not read only) and it says I have complete control in the security tab.

I’ll go post a request for support with WinZip – but has anyone else experienced anything like this?

Thanks,
Jan

try using cloud as your av for now, scan your pc again with spybotsd, threatfire wont hurt also and try scanning your pc with ad-aware. this has nothing to do with winzip, or indexing. can you give an idea of what was inside that zipped folder? did you downloaded it from a trusted site?

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try using cloud as your av for now, scan your pc again with spybotsd, threatfire wont hurt also and try scanning your pc with ad-aware. this has nothing to do with winzip, or indexing. can you give an idea of what was inside that zipped folder? did you downloaded it from a trusted site?

This is a zipped file that I created on another machine and moved to this one. It has a set of 10 graphics (regular jpgs) that I created in it. That (creation) machine has every kind of security protection imaginable so it was not the source of a problem. Winzip 14.5 is definitely the issue. I just downloaded two free zip utilities and both of them handled this correctly. I could unzip and then find the files/folders with no problems. I tried WinZip once more and it seems to unzip these same files but they don’t show up anywhere but inside the Winzip file open dialog box.

As a further test, I used a third machine to zip some files with a much older version of winzip and can replicate this now every time. WinZip 14.5 won’t work properly while the two free utilities do.

I have had customers write and say that they are unable to use files that were sent in zipped files and I thought it was user error on their end. I just put two and two together now to realize that the issue is with the zipped files made with WinZip 14.5.

I appreciate the suggestions for other AV packages but I use a site license for a professional level AV on my machines and don’t want to change it. My AV is an enterprise level package that includes malware protection. I did run ad-aware and got a clean bill of health.

Jan

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This is a zipped file that I created on another machine and moved to this one. It has a set of 10 graphics (regular jpgs) that I created in it. That (creation) machine has every kind of security protection imaginable so it was not the source of a problem. Winzip 14.5 is definitely the issue. I just downloaded two free zip utilities and both of them handled this correctly. I could unzip and then find the files/folders with no problems. I tried WinZip once more and it seems to unzip these same files but they don’t show up anywhere but inside the Winzip file open dialog box.

As a further test, I used a third machine to zip some files with a much older version of winzip and can replicate this now every time. WinZip 14.5 won’t work properly while the two free utilities do.

I have had customers write and say that they are unable to use files that were sent in zipped files and I thought it was user error on their end. I just put two and two together now to realize that the issue is with the zipped files made with WinZip 14.5.

I appreciate the suggestions for other AV packages but I use a site license for a professional level AV on my machines and don’t want to change it. My AV is an enterprise level package that includes malware protection. I did run ad-aware and got a clean bill of health.

Jan

i’m trying this one :)is this a paid version of winzip? i tried it’s eval version and working fine with my jpeg 😉

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i’m trying this one :)is this a paid version of winzip? i tried it’s eval version and working fine with my jpeg 😉

Yes, I have paid for Winzip all the way back to version 9. I have downloaded a couple of other free zip utilities and neither is having this problem so it’s time to move away from WinZip.

Thanks for the suggestions and replies!

Jan

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I found your problem interesting because I have a similar problem. I recently upgraded my PC from Vista to Windows 7 Home Premium and I noticed a similar problem. I have a program that I have used for several years to convert or create ebook files for my Palm ereader program (I like the auto-scroll feature for reading). The program takes the file you create by either typing or pasting text into it and first creates a plm file, which it then converts to a pdb file for the ebook to be transferred to the Palm. I noticed the first time I used it with Window 7 that the plm files showed up but not the pdb files. When I did a search on the entire drive to see if they were being inadvertently saved in some other directory, I would either find a shortcut or the file with an icon indicating it was locked, both in the standard location were the plm files were being stored. However, I could not access the files to copy, move or change the attributes. Since I really didn’t have time to investigate this phenomenon, but it did look like the files were being created, I decided to try creating them in an external location. I inserted the SD card from the Palm and recreated the pdb file pointing to the folder location on the SD card that the palm sync location usually stores ebooks in and it worked. The newly created file showed up in Windows 7 explorer in the new location on the SD card, still couldn’t see it on the “C drive” even though I have explorer set to show all files including system files. Still don’t understand why they show up in the search results when I can’t see them otherwise. Looks like it could be related to the problem you are having with you zip files.

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I’d give WinRAR a try…I’ve always liked it! It does Zips and RARs and actually makes smaller files!!

http://rarlabs.com/

There’s a trial version so that you can try it before you buy.

Paul

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