A fairly new Windows 7 Professional 64bit installation has had its Program Files directory marked as a File instead of a directory with the size reporting as 0 bytes. The <DIR> attribute is missing and I can not find anywhere how to mark it back as a folder. "Program Files (x86)" is still present as a directory but the 64 bit "Program Files" and all the functionality that its included inside is now not working for obvious reasons.

Let's try and find out what's going on. Please do this: Click the Start globe.Type the three letters cmd into the Search box and press EnterType the following commands exactly and press Enter after each of them: set Log="%UserProfile%\Desktop\Log.txt%" set system >> %Log% set program >> %Log% dir /a c:\ >> %Log% %Log%Mark and copy the text you see, then paste it into your reply.

Here's a hyperlink to the output (let me know if it doesn't work for you): Log,txt Figured it would be easier than pasting it in here. I see that there is a Program Files directory sitting in random Recycle Bins but I truly dont know how to access them to try a restore (been in Linux too long). Let me know what you think may be the issue and thank you very much for your time!

You are correct - the Program Files folder is now a 0-byte file. How this could have happened I have no idea. Malware? Virus? Glitch? User error? You can restore the Program Files folder from the Recycle bin like so: Delete the 0-byte file "c:\Program Files"Open the Recycle Bin on your desktopRight-click the Programs File folderLeft-click "Restore".

I was thinking possible Malware or Virus but I see no other traces of it so far. Glitch and user error sound more possible. As for restoring from Recycle Bin, the folder is not present when I check inside of Recycle Bin. I have made sure all hidden files and system files are showing but still no luck. I also tried using the path that is shown in that text output to go directly to where it said the Directory was stored but it says it does not exist. Needless to say I am confused on how to located that Directory inside of those paths.

OK, let's get out the big stick: 1. Mark the following line with your mouse, then press Ctrl+C in order to put it into the clipboard. Note that the line wraps around. c:\$Recycle.Bin\S-1-5-21-844397075-441851230-310601177-2236\$RG0LJLD\DWGTrueViewx86InstallImage\x86\dwgviewr\en-us\Aoem 2. Log on under an admin account. 3. Click the Start globe. 4. Type the three letters cmd in the Search box. 5. Press Ctrl+Shift+Enter 6. Click "Run as Administrator". 7. Type the following commands: del "c:\Program Files"{Enter} cd /d {Do not press Enter!} Right-click any area of the console screen, then click Paste You should now see the whole Recycle Bin path Press Enter 8. move "Program Files" \ {Enter}

Seems to have moved that version of the folder out which is huge so thank you. It contains old data though from the looks of it. Curious though, it seems that possibly the folders in c:/found.000/(subdirectory)/ may be the old folders that are supposed to be in Program Files originally. Do you supposed I am right in this assumption?

We're getting closer. If you have a found.000 folder then you are the victim of some chkdsk action. When it finds some disk corruption then it creates folders of this type. You can now use the above methods to rename then restored "Program Folders" directory to "Program Folders.1", then move the "Program Folders" directory from C:\Found.000 to the root to see if it is any better.

Told user to try chkdsk early to see if it was an issue that could have been resolved with that so thats why it happened. No Program Files in the found.000 directory but Im just going to copy what is inside into Program Files (pretty sure at this point its the missing subdirectories from Program Files) and see if the user can operate system as normal. Thank you much Oberwald, you were a huge help!

Told user to try chkdsk early to see if it was an issue that could have been resolved with that so thats why it happened. No Program Files in the found.000 directory but Im just going to copy what is inside into Program Files (pretty sure at this point its the missing subdirectories from Program Files) and see if the user can operate system as normal. Thank you much Oberwald, you were a huge help!