Installed Win7 and lost Vista documents

gwr3850 · 29 Dec 2014 at 14:11

So basically,

I have upgraded to Win8.1, so have a spare copy of Win7. So I thought I would install it onto my Dad's PC.

My Dad's PC had windows Vista installed on C: Drive and I formatted another spare drive ( E: ) and installed Win7 there. What I didn't know would that it totally changed all the Personal shell folders. of both Windows 7 and Vista on the E: drive

So now all the Vista Documents,Videos and Pictures show as blank links, and the links from the start menu don't work. And the actual files are missing.

I have tried the location restored method and checked registry path's, but can't seem to find where the files are.

malachi · 31 Dec 2014 at 15:34

Check in the Windows.old folder.

Deleted member 77746 · 31 Dec 2014 at 16:22

Hope you haven't done a format as a full recovery may be needed.

gwr3850 · 31 Dec 2014 at 18:47

hey sorry i havent formatted the C drive as it has the files on that I need. anf I have it to boot to Win7 straight away so vista isn't being touched at current

out of curiosity how would i access this old windows folder?

bledd · 1 Jan 2015 at 09:05

Default folder for Documents would be..

X:\Users\username\Documents

Check all drives for this folder structure.

When installing Windows, it's always a good idea to remove all other drives during the Windows install. This forces the Windows install to be on C:\

Having Windows not on C:\ can cause issues in badly coded programs.

gwr3850 · 1 Jan 2015 at 23:02

hey there

ah yeah user personal folders documents you mean. as I said before, the folder themselves all disappeared. They all came up as broken links at first.

Deleted member 77746 · 2 Jan 2015 at 09:32

Try unhiding all files and folders

darael · 2 Jan 2015 at 15:57

Search the drive for a known filename, this might help you find out where personal folders are.