PCFormat Forum Archive

hi can some1 please help me. i restarted the machine but while logging in it just preapared me as a new user. and desktop is clean and all documents gone. can some1 please help me recover it.

The most common cause of this that I've seen is a corrupted user profile -- did you get a message stating that you had been logged in with a temporary profile?

If so, here's the fix.

Navigate to "C:\Users"
Can you see a folder there with your old username?
If so, then all your documents should be in that folder, assuming you are using the standard windows documents folder.

the fix doesnt work. that old usernames folders are all empty. the fix just copies empty folders. yeah the older username is there but theres nothing in the folders

could the desktop files have been moved to somewhere in one of the folders other than 'users'? (the program files or windows or something)

Is the PC on the domain?

its on workgroup, i right click COMPUTER and checked properties. workgroup shows up by computer name

i've been coming across many help articles where they advise to delete the user account and so on but i just want to first locate the files from the desktop and my documents befor i delete anything.

Have you used search to find the documents? Don't try and find whole file name - try and find all files created/modified in a particular date period. If that cannot find them, then I am afraid that they are gone.

wait, please dont go there. how could they just wiped out like that

It happens when there is a problem writing the profile to the drive. We have had a similar problem on a domain when it is not set to save the profile. I assume a vital file was damaged and MS replaced it as it was unreadable. But I am no expert. Perhaps and see if one of the more technical, knowledgeable people answer you. Open a dos window. Use go to the correct directory and see if there are files there.

But sadly my experience with Windows is that if it cannot see the file - then you are proverbially "twisted in". Try an undelete program. DOS was so easy - you could undelete anything as it was never really gone - you just had to know what it was called.