User Account Vanished - Help!

[DB]

I am running Windows XP Professional with SP2.
Yesterday when I turned on the computer, one of the User Accounts was gone.
One day it was there, the next day it was gone without a trace, along with
all the files and programs associated with that user. The User Account is
also gone from the "Local Users and Groups" list in the "Computer
Management" window.

Any advice as to how this could have happened, or how to recover the lost
files, would be greatly appreciated.

- D. Boucher

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I am running Windows XP Professional with SP2.
Yesterday when I turned on the computer, one of the User Accounts was gone.
One day it was there, the next day it was gone without a trace, along with
all the files and programs associated with that user. The User Account is
also gone from the "Local Users and Groups" list in the "Computer
Management" window.

Any advice as to how this could have happened, or how to recover the lost
files, would be greatly appreciated.

- D. Boucher

Double-click "My Computer" on the desktop, then open the
folder C:\Documents and Settings. This folder usually contains
the files for every user. Can you see the missing account name?

 

[DB]

Double-click "My Computer" on the desktop, then open the
folder C:\Documents and Settings. This folder usually contains
the files for every user. Can you see the missing account name?

No, the account name is gone from there too.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

No, the account name is gone from there too.

I suspect you became the victim of some malware you activated
while browsing the Internet. Note that malware does not usually
get intercepted by virus scanners.

 

[Guest]

this happened to me on 01/02/07! I dont know anything about malware, but i
tried for 8+ hours a day for about 3 weeks to find the lot user and recovery
programs found the files but they were all in code or said they were empty
and needed to be deleted because the file the shortcut pointed to were no
longer there. Any way to savethis? also it is a 90 gb hard drive and before
onlyabout 20& full. after the user disappeared it was 98% full. I couldnt
even do adisk clean up. I lost 2+ years of work. My nightly backup was
never verified and come to find out, the network didn't ever keep a copy!
thanks and sorry to butt in

 

[Rock]

this happened to me on 01/02/07! I dont know anything about malware, but i
tried for 8+ hours a day for about 3 weeks to find the lot user and
recovery
programs found the files but they were all in code or said they were empty
and needed to be deleted because the file the shortcut pointed to were no
longer there. Any way to savethis? also it is a 90 gb hard drive and
before
onlyabout 20& full. after the user disappeared it was 98% full. I
couldnt
even do adisk clean up. I lost 2+ years of work. My nightly backup was
never verified and come to find out, the network didn't ever keep a copy!
thanks and sorry to butt in

<snip>

The odds of data recovery are slim at this point. Sounds like your best
option is to send the drive to a data recovery specialist. They are very
expensive.

www.driversavers.com
www.ontrack.com
http://services.seagate.com/

The next time you need to post a question do not add it as a reply to
someone else's thread - called hijacking. Start a new question.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Here are a few tools you can use to recover files:
http://www.restorer2000.com/r2k.htm
http://www.hddrecovery.com.au
http://bootmaster.filerecovery.biz
http://www.runtime.org/ (GetDataBack - has a trial version)
http://www.softwarepatch.com/software/filerecoverysecdownload.html
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Your best bet is to install them on a different PC,
then connect the problem disk as a slave disk.

Backups are useless unless they are tested at
regular intervals. What did you back up to?
A 2.5" hard disk in an external USB case makes
a highly effective low-cost backup medium that
is very easy to use and to test.