so here is my situation, and i hope that someone on the forum can help, i know there is some witty minds out there. I have a usb drive that had probably 1000+ pictures on it. All in seperate folders for each event i took them at. Some are very old pictures dated back to 2007. I inserted the usb drive into my sisters computer to copy some files to it and when i went to open the files on my computer avast alerted me there was a virus and asked if i wanted to move it to the chest. So i did. I went to the virus chest and deleted the infected file from there. Didnt think nothing about it. Went back to my usb drive all word documents were there from my sisters computer, but ALL i mean ALL my pictures were gone, Just the folders show up, but when i click to open the folders i get an error message that it cannot open the file. The folders are in a few kb so i know there is nothing in the folders. i am so damn pissed off, and i feel stupid for doing what i did, but i had no idea this would of happen or else i would of left it in the chest. A HUGE MISTAKE. These pictures are important to me. They are photos from family events over the years that i do not have anywhere else. The usb drive was meant to be a back up. I called Avast customer service and i was told that even though the files were deleted from the virus chest, they are still in the registry in windows. That i would need to hire a windows trained professional to get the pictures back, or i could pay them $115 bucks to remotely do it. Now Im not a computer wizard, OBVIOUSLY, but i know there has to be someone who knows how to restore the files deleted from the virus chest through the registry in the computer. I am using windows 7. Any help and advice would be incredibly appreciated.