Aaaaah. Tonight I decided to organise some files and created a new folder in G:\ called 'Old Stuff'. I selected all bar three files (a good couple of hundred files) and dragged them into the folder thiking they'd move immediately. Big mistake. It crashed. I rebooted and can't open any files on the pen drive. The files are there with date and size etc but they will not open. Even right clicking crashes the window.

Any advice?

So these files were on the flash drive and you just tried to move them to a new directory?

I'd probably first go to a Linux machine (download a Live CD if you have to) and create an image of the filesystem on the flash drive ("cp /dev/sdc /tmp/flash.fs" or something like that, depending on how the Linux machine sees the flash drive) and then work with that image.

However, if the files were on your hard drive and they're now gone, the first thing you want to do is not create any new files. You might still be able to undelete the files using an undelete utility. (I don't think this is what you meant, though.)

Yup, flash drive to flash drive. I'll have a look at doing something with Linux although now I'm out of my depth :P

Thanks for the info. So, these should be recoverable?

Dunno. Maybe.

Bitt's recommendation of an image is the best thing to start with. Then you can try any recoevery program and worst case if it messes up the drive, just copy the image back.

Something like Knoppix is good since it's a live boot CD and won't require any installation. I use it for this sort of thing.

Sounds like it's partially corrupted at least, so a simple undelete won't do any good.

I have had good success with the (non-free) R-Studio NTFS
http://www.data-recovery-software.net/

For straight file recovery (on a Windows XP Professional O/S) I have used the (non-free) File Scavenger. You can recovere files from a 'Defunct' drive and save to a DIFFERENT drive. I was able to recover 60 Gig of mp3's and jpg's using it. It is NOT a quick process.
Just for what the above is worth. Don't thing that is what you were looking for.

Why?

I thought he was trying to salvage the entire drive. If he just wants to give it shot to recover the files, cool

You can also download their trial and it will run and tell you (by color coded flags) how good of a chance it has of recovering the files. The you can buy the sofware on line. Once he has the software he should be good to go.