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help me recover all my wife's Windows files


Joe Frickin' Friday

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Joe Frickin' Friday

Last week my wife and I got identical new Dell Inspiron desktop PCs. Knowing they would be loaded with crapware, I did a fresh Windows install on each, and then transferred our files onto our respective machines from a portable drive.

 

Somehow when I was setting her Windows up, I fired up a OneDrive account for her, and it started syncing all the files in her Desktop and Documents folders. Not enough room, so the system sent her email messages, at which point she asked me what the hell OneDrive was. I explained it (Cloud drive, automatic backup, access files anywhere, etc.) and she said nope, don't want it. So I unlinked her PC.

 

All seemed well until last night, when all of the files in her Desktop and Documents folders were GONE. Windows had done an automatic update the previous night, which seemed like it might be the culprit. Searched around online, and yeah, some people have had problems with disappearing files. I tried the most common trick, tweaking the File Explorer settings to show hidden files and folders, and sure enough, it it revealed a Windows.old folder that the update had apparently created, complete with user folders in there. But her data files weren't there. I tried rolling back the updates, but no dice: her files can't seem to be found anywhere on the hard drive.

 

Now her computer is acting odd, among other things begging to be let back into OneDrive. :mad: I'm just about at the point of dusting off and nuking the site from orbit starting over: doing a new Windows install, this time scrupulously avoiding OneDrive with a ten-foot pole. She hasn't lost any data - we still have all the files on the portable drive and on the old PC - but the new computer inspired her to do some digital housekeeping, i.e. organizing an ocean of desktop files into folders, deleting old versions of various files and so on. A clean start means she would lose all that effort, which would suck.

 

So before I do that...has anyone seen anything like this? Any suggestions on recovering all of her files/folders?

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Joe Frickin' Friday
Can you do a restore point?

 

If you're talking about rolling back to an existing restore point...I'll check again tonight, but I don't think any were available.

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Lone_RT_rider

No wonder you didn't return my message last night. Holy crap man. I bet last night was more than a bit stressful! I wish I could help, but my IT days stopped almost 20 years ago. I'm pretty sure Rainy isn't up to speed anymore either. She switched to Program management a few years ago, though it still might be worth an email or phone call?

 

Shawn

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Just bought a new HP All-in-one....Power went off for a minute and....it would not start windows. Spent over two hours with HP and they had to send me a recovery flash drive. 2 days later...it arrived and it took almost 3 hours to go through that process.

 

It works! But I lost everything I had done up to that point so it was like starting over with an out of the box computer...So I have a LOT of hours into this. It would NOT recover using the "save files" procedure.

 

Now I worry why it did that when the power went off.

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Google is my IT guy.

 

"How to use windows.old" found many responses. How to recover individual personal files or roll back the entire machine here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-do-i-restore-a-windows-10-windowsold/a00462b5-12c6-4bab-8d92-b9c93a50f8c6. Re-doing the housekeeping may be unavoidable at this point - you can't back up a deletion.

 

Google is also where I find how to remove/disable OneDrive. I think it is still on my computers, but I never see it anymore.

 

I strongly recommend using a disc imaging backup program on each computer such as Macrium Reflect or Acronis True Home. Set up an automatic weekly full disk backup of C:\ with an incremental backup every day or two. The daily backups take only minutes since the changes are small. For convenience, we backup over our network to an external drive plugged into the USB port on my router. Older backups are automatically deleted, keeping only a month or so of backups to avoid filling up the external drive.

 

Over the years, I've never lost a data file, but I have had PCs made unusable by my own playing around, viruses, ransomware and so-called "updates". This often required a full re-installation of the operating system and all software, plus more tweaking of options and preferences to get back to normal. Sometimes this took a full day for just the basics. Now, I just boot from a DVD or USB stick and restore my system to to the exact same point it was in a day, week, or month previously.

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Joe Frickin' Friday
Does the Recycle bin contain any of the missing files?

 

Nope. In fact, as part of her housekeeping she had deliberately tossed some files in the recycle bin...and somehow the recycle bin got emptied with the update.

 

"How to use windows.old" found many responses. How to recover individual personal files or roll back the entire machine here: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-do-i-restore-a-windows-10-windowsold/a00462b5-12c6-4bab-8d92-b9c93a50f8c6.

 

Can't find her files in the Windows.old folder. It just occurred to me that that Windows.old folder may have been generated when I reinstalled Windows over the original factory installation, and may have nothing to do with the recent Windows update. That would explain why it appears to be empty.

 

Re-doing the housekeeping may be unavoidable at this point - you can't back up a deletion.

 

This is the puzzle: Assuming they're actually deleted (as opposed to just having been hidden/relocated) why did her files get deleted? What the hell kind of update truly wipes out a user's files????

 

I strongly recommend using a disc imaging backup program on each computer such as Macrium Reflect or Acronis True Home. Set up an automatic weekly full disk backup of C:\ with an incremental backup every day or two. The daily backups take only minutes since the changes are small. For convenience, we backup over our network to an external drive plugged into the USB port on my router. Older backups are automatically deleted, keeping only a month or so of backups to avoid filling up the external drive.

 

Over the years, I've never lost a data file, but I have had PCs made unusable by my own playing around, viruses, ransomware and so-called "updates". This often required a full re-installation of the operating system and all software, plus more tweaking of options and preferences to get back to normal. Sometimes this took a full day for just the basics. Now, I just boot from a DVD or USB stick and restore my system to to the exact same point it was in a day, week, or month previously.

 

I am leary of full-time connected backup systems. She manually backs up her files pretty regularly to a thumb drive, and I manually back mine up to a USB external hard drive every couple of weeks, with the drive being disconnected the rest of the time. If my computer gets stolen or blown away by a tornado or blown up by lightning or encrypted by ransomware, the disconnected external drive should be fine. Every six months I back files up to a second USB external hard drive, which gets stored in a fire-resistant safe in the basement. A minor disaster means we lose up to a couple of weeks' worth of new data, a major disaster means we lose up to six months' worth of new data. It will take a major nuclear disaster to cause the loss of all of our data, at which point we've got much bigger problems to deal with. No backup plan is foolproof, but I'm more comfortable with this setup than with a permanently connected backup drive.

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Restore points is the place to check first. If the image wasn't there long enough to create a restore (which would be very unusual), then I would stop messing with it, take it to someone like Disk Doctor or Geek Squad. The data is highly likely to still be there. You may need some help getting to it. Do not do a factory reset.

 

It might cost you $75-100 to get it restored with someone, but would you think it would be worth that to make wife happy.....Easy answer :)

Edited by Skywagon
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I agree with David - Stop all efforts and pay a file recovery expert before further damage is done (don't ask why I say this)!

 

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... She hasn't lost any data - we still have all the files on the portable drive and on the old PC - but the new computer inspired her to do some digital housekeeping, i.e. organizing an ocean of desktop files into folders, deleting old versions of various files and so on. A clean start means she would lose all that effort, which would suck.

 

Since you really haven't lost any data, paying for a disc recovery service (or other recovery efforts) would seem a bit extreme and may not actually accomplish what you intend particularly since the PC is now "acting odd"

 

From experience, the housecleaning or recreating a post or a deleted piece of code, goes much faster the second time around. :Cool: With the added benefit that you're back to your original intention of a "clean / fresh install" and a known starting point.

 

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Joe Frickin' Friday

Well, she tried a restore, and inexplicably some of her files reappeared in the Desktop/Documents folders, and the rest appeared in the recycle bin. So she was able to recover her housekeeping effort. We made a backup of all of these files, and then this morning I reinstalled Windows from scratch, and kept OneDrive out of the picture. I think we're OK now.

 

Thanks to all who replied. You's good people. :thumbsup:

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