**DESPERATE NEED OF HELP!!**

[J]

ok, heres the deal...my comp started to act up and
wouldnt turn on, so i put it into safe mode and tried to
do a system restore...only it froze halfway through, so i
was forced to restart my computer. When it rebooted, it
went into Windows XP as normal...except a lot of my
desktop icons were gone. I thought this was weird, but
the most devistating thing is when I opened 'My
Documents' everything is gone!!!! All my college apps and
essays were in there!!! I am in desperate need of help if
anyone can tell me how to recover my files. Thanks in
advance, email me please if you have a response.

update: ok, i restored my computer to dec 9 when I had my
files....but the my documents is still empty!!!! I am
logged into the same user that I always am, I cant find
the files anywhere!! omg please help!

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

System Restore is not intended and does nothing with personal files.

Log in to an Administrator account.
Search for the documents by name.
Start/Search

 

[J]

tried that, got nothing. I dont see how XP could just go
and delete my files

 

[bud]

It may have booted into the guest account instead of your identity. Check
for that.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Visit http://www.executive.com/undelete/undelete.asp

 

[Pavel]

Did you at any point in very recent time changed the location of My
Documents? If you know the names of some of the documents, did you try to
use the search to find them on your PC?

 

[Guest]

did u do a full system restore? if u did custom files (the ones u created) will be erased. if not my documents is a windows created folder and was probably deleted and created again so everything in it is gone.

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Make sure you can view all hidden files.
Open My Computer
Click Tools
Click Folder Options
Click View tab
Make sure "Show hidden files and folders" is marked under "Hidden
files and folders"
Uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types"
Uncheck "Hide protected operating system files"
Then search.
Change back when finished.

If that still fails:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/datrec.htm

 

[J]

I have tried all these things to no avail. I am a pretty
advanced user so all the little simple stuff has been
tried. I have never heard of XP just erasing an entire my
documents folder so thats y I posted a plea for help
here. I have resorted to recovery software. I was able to
recover SOME of my documents, but they were damaged, so I
had to go and get a Word repair program too. the
recovered documents were a little out of order, but most
of the text was there. I am doing full cluster scans now.
I will tell you if I finally recover all my lost data.

thanks to all who gave suggestions

 

[Warren Young]

tried that, got nothing. I dont see how XP could just go
and delete my files

Yikes. If you have data that you can't live without, back it up to
some type of offline media - zip disk, cd-r/w, tape, or even a floppy
if that's all you have. You never know when a component may fail so
hard that it can't be revived.

Good luck J.

Warren

 

[Guest]

Surely you have backups of important data (or will in the future, I bet). The best way to get your data back, *** if *** it is still on disk (which it may not be as you restored over it, but it could very will be), is to use an online data recovery service. Don't fool around with do it yourself software. I am pretty good at this stuff, and caused myself a problem wiping out partitions and backups (I am religious about making backups), and the online service got it back for me for less than $100, with not a byte lost. They will even let you see the files which are recoverable and let you restore a small amount. Here is the link: http://www.binarybiz.com/drs/ .

You need to stop using the computer until you are ready to recover the data as you will wipe out increasingly more data as you use it. Assuming that you have a desktop machine, you can do what I did and spend $40 on another hard drive and downloaded the data recovery application to it.

If you need more help, I may have some suggestions. Email me at (e-mail address removed).

Good luck,

Mike
----- J wrote: -----

ok, heres the deal...my comp started to act up and
wouldnt turn on, so i put it into safe mode and tried to
do a system restore...only it froze halfway through, so i
was forced to restart my computer. When it rebooted, it
went into Windows XP as normal...except a lot of my
desktop icons were gone. I thought this was weird, but
the most devistating thing is when I opened 'My
Documents' everything is gone!!!! All my college apps and
essays were in there!!! I am in desperate need of help if
anyone can tell me how to recover my files. Thanks in
advance, email me please if you have a response.

update: ok, i restored my computer to dec 9 when I had my
files....but the my documents is still empty!!!! I am
logged into the same user that I always am, I cant find
the files anywhere!! omg please help!