I am so beyond frustrated right now. My computer is a Gatewaykx4800-01 (Quadcore/4 gigs of RAM) Runny Windows 7 64bit
I purchased it second-hand a little over 2 years ago- aside from randomly powering itself off (turns out to be a common bug) it had given me no issues.
Recently I was getting the BSOD, and upon reboot it would not boot past recognizing my hard drive. In the BIOS my hard drive wasn't listed for (booting), but if I unplugged everything by USB it would be there, and boot fine. Run for maybe 20 minutes, and BSOD again. I used Google for troubleshooting via my phone (I'm software savvy with graphic design etc- but that's where it ends) and my absolute last case scenario (aside from reformatting) was to run Windows Update. I really didn't want to. It's always done something to F up my computer- but as I work from home and this has been impacting my job I went for it. 125 updates (whoops) and it was completed.
It started fine. I plugged everything back in (Bamboo tablet, printer, scanner, two LCD monitors, LCD TV hooked up by HDMI, wireless USB adapter, keyboard, mouse). No crashes. Everything is running fantastic. Oh Windows Update why did I demonize you so much. Ha.
So I open Photoshop to do some editing on one monitor, and open Explorer (My Pictures/Documents) on the other monitor as per usual. When I open My Pictures (organized by month) only 6 folders show up (I have about 50,000 photos on there, couple hundred folder, and then subfolders). I immediately almost crap myself. So I go to "arrange by folder". Phew. They're all there. So I switch back to "arrange by month" (my preference) and it's back to only 6, and it's loading slow as all get out. Hmmmph. So I open My Documents, and go into my Scrapbooking folder (I have about 300gigs of scrapbooking graphics as well). They're in folders, and then subfolders. Each folder is a category, and inside each folder is a sub-category. So if I were looking for say, a button, I could just search "button" in the search bar at the top of my Explorer Window, and it would bring up every file (and folder) with the word button in it.
But no. Not anymore. Now it will bring up folders with the name button in it- but no sub-folders, no files. WTF? So I searched "png" and nothing comes back. I searched .jpg, and a handful of files that are not in subfolders popped up. So I just clicked and went through each folder- everything is there, why the F can't I search it. If I go into each category and sub-category every time I need a certain embellishment or letter, that's really going to make this process a nightmare- and make projects take waaaaay longer than they should (BTW I do Photography, pencil portraits, graphic design, archival scrapbooks and photo repair, scrapbooking, and cardmaking). I have painstaking organized every little graphic into these folders so they have keywords I can search to save time. Now that option has been obliterated.
I've tried properties, pissing around with all the search and indexing options- no dice. I've Googled and checked countless forums that almost sound like similar issues- but then they aren't. I don't want to run system restore and run the chance my computer goes back to its BSOD bullshit. And I really really really don't want to reformat. Is anyone familiar with this bug? Thank you!