I noticed abnormal amounts of disk access, checked Resource Monitor and saw “System” writing millions of bytes to various files in one folder. Checked the folder in question, the thousands of images in it had all been replaced with a random screenshot, and a large number of 0 byte files ending in “.swp” had been created. I wasn’t touching the folder or the image that was copied at the time. Shut it down as fast as possible, now I’m stuck. No results online for similar problems. It happened a little while after clearing Chrome cache, that’s the only circumstantial thing I can think of.
If it’s ransomware… it probably would have garbled files rather than replacing them. I haven’t installed anything new in a week or so.
If it’s a windows bug… it would be less specific, and someone will have encountered it before and mentioned it online.
The images were definitely replaced and not incorrectly thumbnailed, as seen in photo viewer and GIMP.
I will boot into live linux and see the extent of the damage, other than that, where to go from here?? I don’t want to boot up again and let it continue.
