FILES GONE - WIN 10 UPGRADE

[lciavarella]

Hp Laptop – customer does the Windows 10 upgrade and has no files or pictures in the folders. The customer then reads online files are in Windows.old folder and drags to desktop. Customer says after a reboot desktop has changed and no Windows.old folder anymore.

I have searched this computer and can’t find any .jpg or .doc or .xls files. Using *.jpg command.

Any suggestions or is it bad news time for customer.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Something is amiss with this story.

Are you sure the client didn't do basically a nuke n pave during the upgrade?. Also Windows.old missing?. Possibly ran a clean up afterwards, which removed the .old dir.

Have you tried any recovery software, or just done the search for files?

 

[lciavarella]

Customer not savvy enough to nuke and pave. Also claims files and pics were in folder at one time now the Windows.old folder is empty.
I'm getting image now before I try recover.

 

[jmitservices]

You could try shadowexplorer.

 

[nlinecomputers]

Windows.old is deleted after 30 days. Also can be deleted if a major upgrade like the 1511 update is done.

 

[myleso]

So much for "All of your files are exactly where you left them", they should have also added "except for those utilities you installed, and your updated drivers. We deleted them and re-enabled the stuff from our app store that you must have disabled by mistake"

 

[Larry Sabo]

I just finished a recovery yesterday for a laptop where exactly the same happened. Customer recovered her data from windows.old and upon restarting the laptop, Windows seemed to do another process and when it finished starting up, her restored data was gone and there was a new windows.old with no user data in it. She had gone to BestBuy and another local DR firm, who both quoted ridiculous prices and/or failed to recover any data using ShadowCopy Explorer, Recuva, and who knows what else. There were a couple of remote support agents running when I started it up after the recovery, so at least two outfits had a go at it with a variety of tools and came up empty.

When I got the laptop, I immediately did a sector-sector clone using the DFL-DDP (not Windows), and then ran RestorerUltimate (R-Studio clone) but it couldn't find any of her data. So I then ran Active@ File Recovery Pro on it. It recovered most of her data, much of it into folders named using meta-data in the recovered files. Still had to delete some extraneous junk (Windows graphics, visited web page graphics, corrupted images, etc. but not too bad.

She originally said all she wanted was pictures and documents. When she picked it up, she asked where are my videos? So I did a supplementary scan of the clone drive and recovered the videos last night.

Edit: Just to clarify, RestorerUltimate couldn't find her data without doing a scan for RAW files. The RAW scan recovered lots of pictures and other files, but saved them in random-name folders. Active@ File Recovery found more files than RestorerUltimate and organized them better.

 

[HFultzjr]

If they are like 99.9% of my customers, they probably don't have a backup either?
Try some recovery software as previously mentioned.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I have searched this computer and can’t find any .jpg or .doc or .xls files. Using *.jpg command.

How exactly? By default I don't believe the windows search will search files in another users folder due to permissions.

Edit: You can easily install "Everything" via ninite.com it runs as administrator by default and searches for files very quickly.

 

[lciavarella]

Thanks for the suggestions.
I did the Everything search and no joy there - I love that application.
And yes, we have no backup. I'm cloning right now and I'm going to try Larry's "Active File Recovery" Do I need to buy pro version or do you think standard will get it? Larry your story is same as mine but customer came directly to me first so I'm hoping my chances of recovery are better than what you had.

Also Window.old is empty now and upgrade was done on December 5th.

 

[lciavarella]

Forgot to mention in last post, I did go back to Windows 7 and the documents and picture folders were empty also.

 

[Larry Sabo]

@Iciarella, I believe you need the Pro version to save recovered files to folders named based on the meta-data, and don't know if they have a trial version of that or not. Actually, my customer was pleased with the recovery, so I don't think we missed much--other than the videos, which I didn't originally scan for. Good luck!

 

[cyabro]

This seems to be a common issue at the moment with Windows 10 after doing the upgrade of the major version upgrade recently released.
We've seen quite a few now.
Windows appears to be going into a temp profile so customer thinks all their files are gone.
Also missing is the Start menu button so they can't shut down properly.
We get the machine in the workshop, shut it down correctly then start up again and Windows finishes what it was doing and starts up normally back into the customers profile with all their data.

 

[lciavarella]

I thought of this immediately and check to see if there was more then one profile and there was not. This laptop has start button and actually Windows 10 functions correctly. I also created another Admin account and searched for the files - nothing.