Windows 10: My Files turn into folder

Hello. I am running Windwos 10 for almost 2 years now.
I have 2 external Hard Drives and a lot of files on these drives appear as folders. I cannot view them, delete them, copy them or do anything else.
Windows produce a "... is not accessible. The directory name is invalid" warning.

- This happens only to external Drives. My internal hard files seem OK.
- This does NOT happen to specific file types. It happens to .srt files, any kind of video files as well as any kind of image files.
- It turns out that files are NOT corrupted. Using IObit Unlocker, I can unlock and copy my files to another path and they seem OK. But I can do it only one file at a time.

I noticed that there is another guy with the same problem in your forum but there was no solution proposed.
The Directory Name Is Invalid - Windows 10 Forums

Can you please help?

:)

 

Folder converted into 32kb files

There is no doubt that you're infected with a Virus, but can send a screen shot?.

What were the last steps taken before this happen?

Regardless, please run Windows Defender (or your own Anti Virus), update its Virus Definition, and Run a full PC scan.

Expectation: After the Virus scan, it not definite that the files will be recovered, not even if you use System restore, since basically they are destroyed. I would also suggest you to minimize your relationship with the Internet until the
PC is cleaned from threats.

Update me when done.

 

Folder converted into 32kb files

Lots of folder in my external hard disk converted into 32kb file. chk disk not helped help me to recover those folders

 

Welcome to the Forum.

This is a guess on my part, mainly because something somewhat similar happened to me. I downloaded a file to my specific C:\ folder. Of all the files in the folder, this particular file showed a folder icon from my regular file browser, XNView. Windows File Explorer allowed me to 'open' the file. But XNView wouldn't let me do anything with the file.

My solution was to go to the Properties of the file from File Explorer and retype the filename. The folder icon changed back to the default icon in XNView, and I was able to move the file to another folder.

So the question I would ask is, are these files pre-Windows 10 (from another system)? Perhaps using a different utf (unicode transformation format)?

 

I'm assuming it could be something to do with Permissions.
Maybe someone can suggest what to do to take permissions of everything, or look online on how to take permissions on files/folders.

 

Thanks a lot for your answers.
Unfortunatelly, I haven't found any solutions yet, and I'm not sure whether it is Windows 10 I should blame or something else.

After some more search, I can now tell it happens to multimedia files. (images, sound and video files). I son't know why, most of the files converted to folders have never been used for tha past 10 years.

 

I found this on the net Folders appear empty or files won't open or are read only after moving an external drive to another PC

Do not know if this applies to your specific case but look at it on this linkhttps://support.wdc.com/knowledgebas....aspx?ID=17632

Were the data of these 2 external HD drives made with your current system/OS/pc or on a other/older system/OS/pc.

And how did you move these files to the 2 external HD disk using Cut and Paste or Copy and Paste

Maybe you can look into this.