Windows 11 file loss

Wrightyuk

Wrightyuk

Wrightyuk

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25 Sep 2019
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347
I updated to Windows 11 from Windows 10 about 2 months ago (rough guess)
After the update I turned my system off as was late at night and then didn't really boot pc again till today.

When I went to load up some music I couldn't find any music files and so I checked other things such as pictures and documents and there was nothing there, now I know people will ask when I updated did I click clean install but I defo clicked keep all files etc and did not do a clean wipe.

All of Mt games are all still installed with all Game save files available I also have dated files in my downloads folder from like a year ago so I know I defo didn't do a c drive clean or chose clean install so now I have come to the conclusion they have got to be hidden somewhere but there is no folder in c called windows.old either in desperate need of help.
Also to add on to this problem I have gone to back up previous version or files whatever its called and it days there is no backup is available.
Wish I knew where the files have been put.
 
Wrightyuk said:
I updated to Windows 11 from Windows 10 about 2 months ago (rough guess)
After the update I turned my system off as was late at night and then didn't really boot pc again till today.

When I went to load up some music I couldn't find any music files and so I checked other things such as pictures and documents and there was nothing there, now I know people will ask when I updated did I click clean install but I defo clicked keep all files etc and did not do a clean wipe.

All of Mt games are all still installed with all Game save files available I also have dated files in my downloads folder from like a year ago so I know I defo didn't do a c drive clean or chose clean install so now I have come to the conclusion they have got to be hidden somewhere but there is no folder in c called windows.old either in desperate need of help.
Also to add on to this problem I have gone to back up previous version or files whatever its called and it days there is no backup is available.
Wish I knew where the files have been put.
Click to expand...

you should find that in your C:\ drive you will have a folder called windows.old jump in there and you should be able to find your files if they didnt move across.

It could also be that windows has decided to redirect the folders so if you navigate to c:\users\ and have a look to see what profiles are in use. It could have created you a new user profile so have a look through those.
 
There is no windows.old folder in the c drive popped into c drive users and there is foldrr called default with the following folders -Desktop, documents, downloads, favourites, links, music, pictures, saved games, videos.
And this folder was a hidden folder
The other 2 non hidden folders are public and wrigh(my user is wrighty)
The folders in default and public were all last modified in 2019 so that's got to be them but......there empty no files
 
Wrightyuk said:
There is no windows.old folder in the c drive popped into c drive users and there is foldrr called default with the following folders -Desktop, documents, downloads, favourites, links, music, pictures, saved games, videos.
And this folder was a hidden folder
The other 2 non hidden folders are public and wrigh(my user is wrighty)
The folders in default and public were all last modified in 2019 so that's got to be them but......there empty no files
Click to expand...

Download a bit of software called jamsoftware treesize free. let it scan your c:\ drive... sort by size and you should be able to see if they are still there.
 
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Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't you looking at the wrong folder? It should be under wrigh, not Default. There's 100gb in that folder so it should be there.

The Default profile is used as a template when creating new users so nothing personal should be saved there.
 
Last edited:
correct its clearly in that wrigh folder location, this is the beauty of treezise you can just expand and see where data is.
 
dont know if this info makes any difference but on win 10, i had all my musci pictures etc in say c drive but i redirected them to the music folder if thgat makes sense not sure i am explaining it correctly because i didnt wanna go to c to load files wanted click music and it all be there but stored on c
 
Wrightyuk said:
dont know if this info makes any difference but on win 10, i had all my musci pictures etc in say c drive but i redirected them to the music folder if thgat makes sense not sure i am explaining it correctly because i didnt wanna go to c to load files wanted click music and it all be there but stored on c
Click to expand...

It's not really clear exactly what you've done, if you redirected them they should be wherever you redirected them too still. But if you're saying you redirected them into the default profile in C:\Users\Default it's quite possible that folder is overwritten during the upgrade process as it isn't a folder you should be putting data in to (hence why it is hidden).

I would just go to the root of each of your drives and in the search box type "*.mp3" (or whatever format your files were in) and see what it finds.
 
andshrew said:
It's not really clear exactly what you've done, if you redirected them they should be wherever you redirected them too still. But if you're saying you redirected them into the default profile in C:\Users\Default it's quite possible that folder is overwritten during the upgrade process as it isn't a folder you should be putting data in to (hence why it is hidden).

I would just go to the root of each of your drives and in the search box type "*.mp3" (or whatever format your files were in) and see what it finds.
Click to expand...
But then if they are redirected from say c to the default music folder they should still be in the original drive
 
Wrightyuk said:
But then if they are redirected from say c to the default music folder they should still be in the original drive
Click to expand...

If by default music folder you mean the folders in C:\Users\Default then these are system tier folders which are used as part of the process for building a new user profile when someone logs on to a computer for the first time - they're not there for you to be storing personal data in. So as I said if you put your data in here then it's quite possible that these folders were overwritten with the Default folder from the Windows 11 image when your computer was upgraded.
 
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