Vista Upgrade Deleted My Documents

[Lawrence]

I have just performed an upgrade from XP to Vista Ultimate. the upgrade ran
very smoothly, but I was shocked to find that all of "my Documents" and my
"Doumnets and settings" had been deleted, but strangely , my wifes user
profile on the same machine was completly intacked. I have tried to use a
data recover tool to recover my data which I can still see on the hard drive,
but most of it has been over written by the upgrade. Does any body have any
idea's what has gone wrong, or if poosible what I could do to recover the
data. Microsoft tech support have not been very helpful.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

There are a number of 'relic' folders, like 'Documents and Settings', in
Vista. The new storage area is "C:/Users", and the old path is redirected to
it. The old folder will seem to exist, and have a shortcut arrow on the icon
in Explorer. This is by design, and is expected behavior.
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[Lawrence]

Thanks Mark, but unfortunatley the files have been deleted form the User
Folder. but all of my wifes profile files have been moved to the new location
successfully.

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

When Vista is not sure how to handle files during an upgrade, sometimes them
are put in a folder called windows.old (used for an uninstall, if called
for) You may find some of your data there.
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[Lawrence]

Unfortunatley I have no windows.old folder. I have also trried running a
search accross the whole hard disk for some of the files that I had but none
were returned by the search.

do you know if the vista installation would create a zip or cab type file of
the profiles under a different name?

 

[Mark L. Ferguson]

No. No zip or cab file is created by the upgrade process. For having good
backup, there is no alternative. I suggest you use The excellent "Complete
PC Backup" utility that comes with Ultimate, for your next system management
task.
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[Sergey Wasilenkow]

I have just performed an upgrade from XP to Vista Ultimate. the upgrade ran

very smoothly, but I was shocked to find that all of "my Documents" and my
"Doumnets and settings" had beendeleted, but strangely , my wifes user
profile on the same machine was completly intacked. I have tried to use a
datarecovertool torecovermy data which I can still see on the hard drive,
but most of it has been over written by the upgrade. Does any body have any
idea's what has gone wrong, or if poosible what I could do torecoverthe
data. Microsoft tech support have not been very helpful.

You can try to find and recover your files with Easy File Undelete:

http://www.munsoft.com/EasyFileUndelete/

It can help to recover files even if their location and size is not
stored in the file system structures.

 

[Adam Albright]

Unfortunatley I have no windows.old folder. I have also trried running a
search accross the whole hard disk for some of the files that I had but none
were returned by the search.

Go to Windows Explorer and expand your root (C drive) so you can see
all the folders. Whatever remains of your files will be somewhere. I
would suggest you look in any folder with a weird name made up of
alpha numeric characters if any such folder exists. Also be sure to
expand the folder named Users. Chances are you files are there under
another folder with your user name and your wife's should be there
under her user name.

If you want to use Search to try to locate specific files remember to
use advanced search and specify everywhere and to look in non indexed
locations otherwise the search is very limited. By default Windows
only looks in folders IT thinks you should put files. If you old
system had them elsewhere search will miss them unless you do as
above.

 

[Nonny]

I have just performed an upgrade from XP to Vista Ultimate. the upgrade ran
very smoothly, but I was shocked to find that all of "my Documents" and my
"Doumnets and settings" had been deleted, but strangely , my wifes user
profile on the same machine was completly intacked. I have tried to use a
data recover tool to recover my data which I can still see on the hard drive,
but most of it has been over written by the upgrade. Does any body have any
idea's what has gone wrong, or if poosible what I could do to recover the
data. Microsoft tech support have not been very helpful.

My attempt to upgrade to Home Basic ended up with EVERY shortcut on my
system pointing to IE.

Unlike you (at least from what you wrote), I backed up my system
before attempting the upgrade.

I now have a clean install of Home Basic on one internal hard drive,
and my working XP install on a second internal hard drive.

Spent 24 hours installing all of my programs and critical updates on
the Vista drive... and it's backed up.

 

[Daddy Tadpole]

As I've said on many occasions, user data should go in real folders with
real names, with no redirection and nothing hidden.

Otherwise, what is a Vista user supposed to do if he/she wants to copy some
stuff across to an Apple, a PC running Linux, a network drive or a mainframe
application?

Vista is totally unsuitable for the management of data that is expected to
survive beyond the next stealth update.

Regards