New user here. :) ... need to recover lost photos from Canon ZoomBrowser EX software

[zebrastripe]

Hi everyone, I am new here so bear with me...my first post. I have a Canon S30 camera and software on my PC called ZoomBrowser EX. I think the files got corrupted somehow because when I went to the "Image Library One" I could only see the thumbnails of my pics in "My Images"--couldn't open them. I could open "Samples". So I thought I would hit the "refresh" button on the ZoomBrowser screen, and then I had NO pics in "Image Library One" except for the "Samples". I cannot find about 100 photos! So I called Canon and they tried to recover the pics by walking me through something to do with the database files on my PC computer drive. These files end in: .zbd, .dat, .idx and .FCS. e.g. My DatabaseNew.zbd, My DatabaseOld.zbd ... We couldn't get the pics out of these when we did her procedure. CAN ANYONE HELP?? Thank you very much! --zebrastripe

[Alexey V. Gubin]

Uh, the pictures were originally on the computer or on the camera memory card?

[zebrastripe]

Hi Alexey,
Thank you for replying. I couldn't get on my computer again until now. The photos were taken on my camera with the memory card inside the camera. Then I used a card reader to transfer the photos to the hard drive of my PC. I have used the memory card several times since as it was 4 years ago that I put the photos on my PC hard drive. Each time the memory card was full I would download and erase the photos on my memory card so I could take more photos. So, now 4 years later I was trying to open up the photos in the Canon ZoomBrowser EX software to get them out and into a different place on my computer but I couldn't open up the thumbnails... (see more details in 1st post)... Any hope?? I'll check back for your reply in the morning. Thanks so much. --zebrastripe

[Alexey V. Gubin]

So there is nothing on the memory card, sure.

I can only suggest you install ZAR onto something which is NOT your hard drive, like onto USB flash drive, and try the unformat procedure (as described for unformat). You should have ZAR recover "both current and erased files" and then try to locate the images.

However, I believe the optimal solution for you would be to contact some sort of a local expert, maybe you have a friend who is really into computers, so they review the system and the situation and make sure we are not missing something obvious. And also have them perform the procedure I described above, in anticipation that they can spot something you do not see and I cannot predict from here.

The images just should not disappear on their own, so there must be some sort of a malfunction in the system, but we do not see what it is.