Laptop just lost all music, picture files, etc.... HELP!!!

[clarkytrd]

as above... just turned laptop on this morning and wallpaper had gone, then checked all my music, pictures, etc, and everything had gone, BLANK.... nothing left.

I'm running Windows Vista Basic..... Logged onto the net and all my passwords had been forgotten too.

Need help quick as all my pictures were important.

Thanks
John

 

[GT-TD04]

Try this - http://www.piriform.com/recuva

Weird though,a problem with windows,even a big problem doesn't usually effect your files,and if it did you shoudn't start off on a clean slate.

Sounds more like your HDD was formatted and a fresh install put on

 

[clarkytrd]

So have I any chance of getting any of my files back??

All pictures of the progress of the car are all gone ..

I'l give that a try and see what happens, will report back

 

[clarkytrd]

€20 to download it lol ..... any other way I can do it without it costing me?

Cheers

 

[dark_knight]

pre-loss events

please tell us the last thing you did before the event. this can help us diagnose what proli went wrong. while at it, minimize writing to the hard drive by doing stuff like trying to re-install programs etc. this will only reduce your chances of data recovery.. if it gets to that.

 

[clarkytrd]

I done nothing to anything, last night everything was still there.

I only noticed it first thing this morning when I turned my laptop on...

- wallpaper had returned to stock windows wallpaper
- all itunes music had gone
- music, picture, etc, files had all gone

Would a system restore help?!

 

[dark_knight]

system restore

system restore would be one of the ways to diagnose a fault. it however, does not tamper with data/files so prior to trying that, we need to diagnose it further. i would assume that the pc is constantly online..? when you were done last night, did you put it to sleep, hibernate or turn off..?

since windows stores each user profile separately, i'm also assuming that you logged in as the same user you've been logging in as all along..?

also, when you log in, does windows tell you it's logging you in with a temporary folder for whatever reason..?

 

[clarkytrd]

I shut the whole laptop down completely last night and everything was fine prior to that.

I only use the one profile, nobody else has access to it.

Any idea's what I can do?

 

[dark_knight]

user profile management

try this; locate C:\Users\Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed, and Username is your user account. browse in there to see if your data still resides intact.

ps: i'm on windows 7 so my directives may not be spot on but should just act as a guide.
all the best..

 

[clarkytrd]

System Restore done the job.... Very strange?!

Time for an external hardrive to back up everything now.

Thanks for the help guys, always very helpful.

John

 

[dark_knight]

saved by the bell, errm.. system restore

you are most welcome clarkytrd. i'm sure your heart had sunk there for a bit..
plus, why don't you share the pix of the car you say you have on your pc..

 

[Arnold]

This happens when Windows cannot load your current profile. There are microsoft support articles with procedures on how to fix if this happens again

 

[dark_knight]

sorted

@Arnold: this is the same thing i suspected earlier when we were still in the diagnosis stage. glad it's sorted now..

 

[Paul_JJ]

I shut the whole laptop down completely last night and everything was fine prior to that.

I only use the one profile, nobody else has access to it.

Any idea's what I can do?

Get it to a specialist. I would sort you out but Im too far of you. You might have a HDD fault and it's on it's way - so some of the data got lost.

There is a chance that you might be able to recover your data, but you HDD would have to be plugged in to a PC.
If you will write any new files on your HDD now then you won't see your old data again. So leave the laptop as is and get it to a specialist, mind you the recovery won't be cheap and might not even be possible at all.

 

[si2001]

If you're using Vista Basic make sure you have it patched to Service Pack 2. Vista was notoriously buggy until SP2 was released and fixed everything that was wrong with Vista. I used it for 4 years without issue and it did get a lot of bad press when it first came out for its high hardware requirement (it was usually the people with the really crap PC's who complained about it).... anyway I'm going away from the point...make sure SP2 is installed as it could be a bug whereby a corruption in a profile path could be causing it to drop back to a default new user profile.