i woke up this morning to find my PC logged out of windows which i thought was a bit odd (i'd left it logged in last night) but logged in anyway. I got worried when i found everything that id left on my desktop was gone, then i nearly died when i discovered that not only was my my docs folder empty, but so were all of my drives except C and D!!!

after getting over the initial shock i logged into google mail and got a real shock when i saw that the contents of my inbox had been moved to "deleted items"... obviously my emails were easily moved back to the inbox but i'm hoping that the effect on gmail might offer some clue as to what happened to everything else.

Keyboard shortcuts are turned off on my gmail account so that's out of the question. I'm hoping there are people here who know more about how google mail works and might be able to offer their thoughts on what happened.

thanks,

a slightly miserable mark.

thats not a virus..
sorry to break it to ya..
a virus can delete your hard drive.. but cant get access to your gmail account by itself (and dont forget the youve been logged out from windows..)

someone hacked your system...
try getting a better Firewall.. (i recommend Webroot Desktop Firewall.. great firewall..!!)

try to restore your system.. see if it restores your files..

sorry. i forgot to mention that i left gmail logged in overnight.

i suspect you're right though. they probably got in via VNC, althought there's no way they worked out or even forced the password on it. that would explain why my desktop resolution had been dropped to 1024x768 as well – makes vnc much easier to use. but that doesn't explain why my D drive is still intact – what sort of #!£$%"! goes to the trouble of deleting everything and then leaves one drive completely untouched. seems a little odd to me.

just looked through my system logs and true enough, VNC was the problem:
193.11.243.18 – bossieman.csbnet.se
81.137.246.132 – host81-137-246-132.in-addr.btopenworld.com
80.177.197.190 – mailgate.newgorbalsha.org.uk

that'll teach me to use standard ports and enable port forwarding so i could get access from work. ARG!!! i'm so stupid!!!

thanks for pointing me in the right direction David, i'm off to find an undelete command for windows xp. or perhaps a linuxlive recovery cd that's really good with ntfs.

<< what sort of #[put at-character here]!£$%"! goes to the trouble of deleting everything and then leaves one drive completely untouched >>
maybe he got tired.. as you said, it was during night time..

and how about buying a complete system restore software?
(BTW, the system restore that MS offers didnt work?)

glad i could help mate.. :) and good luck.. (if you have further questions im here.. or contact me via mail.. orphandlandgmail.com)