It’s twice happened to me that I would accidentally Shift-Deleted my Pictures Library. Horror! You know how in the heat of working on your computer, you got a bit carried away and didn’t realize the image you wanted to delete, though it appeared selected, was not really selected, but instead the Picture Library was the actively selected item? Well, that happened to me today, to my horror!

I knew there is a Restore Default Libraries command in the Libraries context menu, but wasn’t sure what it would do. So I tried Panda Recovery tool to try recovering some photos I hadn’t had a chance to back up, but it couldn’t find anything in the Pictures Library. Without anything to lose, I clicked the Restore Default Libraries command, and hello, the Pictures Lirary reappeared with all my picture catalog!

Now having calmed down, and got to think about it, it dawned on me: of course, the Library is just a link to another location where the real photos are stored, so removing the Library doesn’t actually wipe out your files. Good for Windows to have it set up like this, it saved my day.