Reboot or turn off PC & downloads deleted

Hi, Odd thing has happened to my PC. I was attacked by trojans which took out Comodo free antivirus and all other supporting anti virus programs. When this happened my PC crashed then rebooted itself and appeared to be running OK, but the downloads were slower.
Now that I have replaced the free Comodo antivirus with free AVG, I notice that all of the downloads I have made to E drive (partitioned drive) disappear from my download folder, as if they have been deleted, so that when I reboot, the folder is empty, while it should remain partially filled with the downloads I have completed.
Two questions, 1) how to recover the deleted files – if they are still in the folder but invisible to me and 2) how to stop the PC from deleting the downloaded files, if for example I have a power cut, or reboot the PC without clearing the download folder first?
Your feedback would be appreciated
Have scanned the hard drive with AVG and Spybot Search & Destroy & TDSS rootkit removal tool and the reports have come back clean.
BigBenn
Answer #1
1. Recuva.
2. Stop downloading infected software and executing it, its not hard at all!
http://www.piriform.com/recuva
Answer #2
You sure AVG doesn’t have a sandbox or something? Man I didn’t think anyone used AVG anymore.
Answer #3
LOL – it was not AVG which got nailed by the Trojans, but Comodo and the latest updated version at that. I’d seen the AVG freebie and kept a copy which I’d downloaded and had on file, so when the Trojan took out Comodo, I switched to that.
I did not download or execute infected software. I have the software I need and I run with that (on “C” drive) and all downloads go to “E”, so if I opened a file, in theory it would be partitioned from “C”.
Whatever this program was, it should have been scanned by Comodo and killed off in its tracks. However, what it did was to kill off Comodo first, before installing itself on my hard drive, where it disabled some other programs too, yet my usual programmes were not affected and I was blissfully unaware of any problems for a few days, until I tried one of my clean up programs, to discover it and all of my supporting anti virus and cleanup programs were dead – then it was simple to remove Comodo from my PC, reboot, delete the Trojans, reboot and reinstal with AVG, which I had on hand.
But, that does not solve the problem of my downloads folder emptying itself, if I lose the power or I turn off my PC without clearing my downloads folder first. Realisitcally, perhaps I should uninstall JDownloader and reinstall it and create a new folder in “E” to download to and delete the old empty download folder – I’ve just got stuff backed up on JDownloader, I cannot replace, if I go thorough the above processes to resolve my problem. So i’m between a rock and a hard place until my downloads sort themselves out.
BigBenn