Windows 11 file loss

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 11:44

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.

Vince · 12 Dec 2021 at 12:00

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.

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.

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 12:31

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

Vince · 12 Dec 2021 at 12:34

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

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.

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 12:49

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 12:50

https://ibb.co/PYwqFWB

Orcvader · 12 Dec 2021 at 13:51

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.

Vince · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:15

correct its clearly in that wrigh folder location, this is the beauty of treezise you can just expand and see where data is.

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:16

Orcvader said:
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.

https://ibb.co/cD4mZvR

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:16

Days the files like music and pictures is empty

andy_mk3 · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:18

Those are shortcuts. Do you have more than one drive in your system?

Vince · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:20

Wrightyuk said:
Days the files like music and pictures is empty

This is because they were redirected, right click on the shortcut and click properties to see where they used to be.

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:29

andy_mk3 said:
Those are shortcuts. Do you have more than one drive in your system?

yes c and d one is programs like software and music etc one was for just games

Vince said:
This is because they were redirected, right click on the shortcut and click properties to see where they used to be.

https://ibb.co/gdzQBx7

Vince · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:31

Wrightyuk said:
yes c and d one is programs like software and music etc one was for just games

https://ibb.co/gdzQBx7

click location

and it should show you where it was.

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:32

i went to target location and its sent me to the defaukt music folder windows makes for you

Wrightyuk · 12 Dec 2021 at 14:34

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

andshrew · 13 Dec 2021 at 14:30

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

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.

Wrightyuk · 13 Dec 2021 at 14:50

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.

But then if they are redirected from say c to the default music folder they should still be in the original drive

andshrew · 13 Dec 2021 at 14:57

Wrightyuk said:
But then if they are redirected from say c to the default music folder they should still be in the original drive

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.

Wrightyuk · 13 Dec 2021 at 15:38

Yes in them ones but the root file was in c or d not directly stored in the default folder.