Sometimes this is how it feels

Computers were given to us to make us suffer.

Or, if they weren't, Microsoft soon revised the mission statement toward that end.

Assuredly, we all have our tribulations with computers. But I seem to have more than my fair share.

The other day, I was doing some long overdue housekeeping in 'My Documents', creating some new sub-folders to tidy files away into. One of these new folders suddenly disappeared off the 'My Documents' contents menu. And it would have to be the largest one, with a lot of the training materials that I use for work, stuff that in some cases took me many hours of painful wrastling with PowerPoint to produce (in most cases I have back-up copies on flash sticks or old computers, but it would be really useful to be able to retrieve them on this drive, without having to find and copy dozens of files from several different offboard locations).

I wasn't (I'm pretty sure) doing anything to this folder at the time: one moment it was there, the next it wasn't. A search indicated that it was still in C:/My Documents/... but it didn't display as such in the contents window; and when I tried to open it through the search results page I got an 'error message' pop-up saying that it could no longer be accessed in that location. Quite flabbergasting! What the hell is the point of a 'search function' which tells you where something isn't but not where something is?? Microsoft, you have really surpassed yourselves on this one!!

I checked that I hadn't inadvertently deleted the phantom folder, or moved it inside another folder (I basically retraced my steps, going over every file and folder I'd edited - and it was nowhere to be found). My likeliest hypothesis was that the folder had somehow been cut but not pasted. If so, this must have been a very weird glitch, because I was sure I hadn't clicked on that folder - and all the cut & paste actions I'd been going through had been completed. And I think I'd tried to paste again, just to make sure I hadn't left something hanging in the ether. And I then I'd hit 'Undo Last' to see if that would bring my folder back - but no.

In the end, I went for that most sophisticated of solutions: I muttered a few brief, angry prayers to the Gods of Data, crashed the computer, and restarted. Voilà - my 'Training Materials' folder was back from the wilderness, whistling casually to itself and pretending it had never gone away at all.

Why? Why does this happen?? Why me, god???