Contents of My Docs dissapeared

[cokecan]

Hi guys

This is a bit of a strange problem......my friend has just recently logged onto his XP SP3 machine only to be greeted with what look likes a completly clean profile (i.e. a new user), when he opens up My Documents it's empty. Strangely enough if you went to Documents & Settings - his username, the Documents folder in there was fine and had all his stuff in. There wasn't any other profiles or duplicates that had been created, just his profile, the admin one, default user and all users.

He copied all his docs from documents and settings to his current desktop then put them in this empty My Documents folder and everything was fine. Having shutdown and come back to his PC, all his documents are gone from both My Documents (where he recently copied his stuff to) and from Documents and Settings.

Any idea's where his stuff has gone or how we can get it back? I'm hoping we can retrieve most of his documents then just remove his profile and create a new one

 

[ajstan]

System restore would be a good place to start, (assuming its enabled).

 

[UKDTweak]

Sounds like his profile failed to load and so windows has logged him in with a TEMP profile.
I assume you moved the files from the original Docs and Settings, and thus when you logged out, the TEMP profile has been cleared, thus loosing the files, as above, try system restore

 

[mast3r]

If all else fails, move the contents into the new DIR.

Make sure the path for my docs is right.

Start menu - Right Clcik my docs - Prop - Location

 

[cokecan]

Thanks for the replies guys,

I didn't think system restore did anything with a users files? only programs and settings etc?

 

[ajstan]

I doubt the files have been deleted, just misplaced somewhere on the hard drive. A system restore might put them back in their place

 

[cokecan]

i've been running a few recovery programs to see if it found any deleted files but nothing of any use so far, searching for the files also doesnt bring up anything, it's like they never existed lol

I'm trying not to do too much at the min incase the files have been deleted so theres still a chance I can recover them before overwriting them with something else. May give system restore ago later though

 

[Dano]

Thanks for the replies guys,

I didn't think system restore did anything with a users files? only programs and settings etc?

It shouldn't, but it will possibly replace the containing folders which have been deleted.

I'd be plugging the drive into another machine and cloning it before much else to be honest.

 

[cokecan]

well system restore made no changes at all lol, i tried 2 different restore points but neither worked.

next plan?

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

I've had this happen to a few of my customers, where they've lost their primary profile and they get set up with a temp profile. I normally tell them to log in as local admin, create a new user and copy the contents from the old docs folder to the new docs folder, plus IE faves if applicable. I never found out what caused the problem.

 

[cokecan]

after a bit more digging it seems this tool may rectify the issue: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/893243

but that probably wont help me here to retrieve these lost files

 

[Raumarik]

1. Is it on a domain?
2. Are group policies set to redirect the "my documents" folders?
3. Are roaming profiles enabled? As it sounds like he's getting a temporary one.

If 1 + either 2 or 3 is enabled then chances are his documents are on a server anyway.

 

[cokecan]

we are on a domain, there are no policies in place to redirect my docs and we don't have roaming profiles enabled.

users generally should save stuff to their own network drive but this doesnt always happen as we can see .

Does anyone know what happens when you shutdown after using a temporary profile? does it just get deleted from the system? where is it stored while its in use?

 

[PatZ1989]

It will possibly be because the profile is using a SID, the name on the profile means little to windows when logging in, for some reason it thinks you are logging in with a different SID which it cant match to a profile therefore creating you a new one

 

[cokecan]

the issue is, it didn't actually create a full new profile like it would for a new user. It's setup this temp profile somewhere and then removed it after the PC was shutdown along with all the files that were moved into it from the original profile