I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated. How can I get them back?

[Windows Central Question]

I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi all, last night I upgraded my PC from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. After the upgrade, I was upset because all of the Documents, Pictures, etc. folders were empty. However, I found all of my old files under C/Users/<my name>, so I moved all of them back into their respective folders in Windows 10, leaving the C/Users/<my name> folder empty.

Unfortunately, this morning I booted up my PC and it went into the Windows 10 welcome screen again (where it says "Hi... All your files are where you left them... We've got features you'll be excited about," etc.) All of my files were gone like the previous time, but this time the C/Users/<my name> folder was still empty (presumably because I moved all of it out). There is an extra 180GB of free space on the C disk now.

I'm assuming Windows has irrevocably deleted all my personal files. There is no system restore point. I'm very upset about this and I'm expecting to hear the worst but if anyone has any advice I'd greatly appreciate it. Why would Windows format twice like that? Has anyone else received this problem? I've also checked the windows.old folder, and the network folder - nothing. Please help!

 

[TechFreak1]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

Please join and specify what do you mean by:

so I moved all of them back into their respective folders in Windows 10

The directory tree for user data that Windows 10 follows is pretty much the same as 8.1.

Also do you have different partitions?

 

[Sandy96789808]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

WeRe you ever able to get your files back

 

[shadow_wings20]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

im also having this problem. i had W7, but i wanted to keep up with my classes and software so i upgraded to 8.1. however upgrading to W8.1 made me loose alot of software like my microsoft office, Adobe, Itunes etc. this was fusterating but i still had all my files, like my documents, music files, photos etc. but the biggest problem came when the upgrade also deleted my antivirus and malware software, so accessing the internet only gave me the worst spam and viruses ive ever had to deal with. it casued so much problems that my only option after faild attempts of removing them was to reboot my laptop and start over. i saved all my data to a external hard drive using the new file history that came with W8.1. it was new so i doubled verified i was doing the correct thing to make sure i was going to have all my data afterwards. once i restarted my W8.1 i also had the oportunity to download W10 for free. said it wouldnt take much to move over to the new software, but as it so happens, i now cant access any of my music files or documents. ive searched over every forum on here about information reguarding this issue that so many others like me have had. ive tried every trick, every example, every sugestion, anything anyone has said to recover lost data, like my music, and all i get is " you dont have premission to access". at this point i feel hopeless, years of documents and music i have had over 12 years just out of my reach and i cant do a damn thing. i have come across these same messages, but i still havent found my data. if anyone could shed some light and actually help me solve this, i would kiss you.

 

[Ricardo Castillo]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

Look for c:\windows.old there is your old data

 

[Jeff Erson]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

im also having this problem. i had W7, but i wanted to keep up with my classes and software so i upgraded to 8.1. however upgrading to W8.1 made me loose alot of software like my microsoft office, Adobe, Itunes etc. this was fusterating but i still had all my files, like my documents, music files, photos etc. but the biggest problem came when the upgrade also deleted my antivirus and malware software, so accessing the internet only gave me the worst spam and viruses ive ever had to deal with. it casued so much problems that my only option after faild attempts of removing them was to reboot my laptop and start over. i saved all my data to a external hard drive using the new file history that came with W8.1. it was new so i doubled verified i was doing the correct thing to make sure i was going to have all my data afterwards. once i restarted my W8.1 i also had the oportunity to download W10 for free. said it wouldnt take much to move over to the new software, but as it so happens, i now cant access any of my music files or documents. ive searched over every forum on here about information reguarding this issue that so many others like me have had. ive tried every trick, every example, every sugestion, anything anyone has said to recover lost data, like my music, and all i get is " you dont have premission to access". at this point i feel hopeless, years of documents and music i have had over 12 years just out of my reach and i cant do a damn thing. i have come across these same messages, but i still havent found my data. if anyone could shed some light and actually help me solve this, i would kiss you.

First of all, I don't mean to like or thank you post. Quote button suddenly failed on my Win Central app.

Back to your problem, have you tried logging in with the Administrator account?

P.S. It's so laggy replying to this using the app. smh

 

[shadow_wings20]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

yes i have log into the administrator account, but i have even less access to my external hard drive than i did on my own account. when im logged into my account the data shows on my hard drive but gives me a " you dont have permission to access" kind of thing.

 

[Jeff Erson]

Re: I think the Windows 10 Upgrade deleted all my personal files. Any help would be appreciated.

Hmm. I did format my other laptop a few times before and I also got that "permission denied" thing. What I did was logged in with the Administrator account (the default Administrator account that you need to enable first) then went to the root directory of my backup files, and changed my (new user account) access permission to read and write to those backup directories/files.

 

[Lantrey Claasen]

this also happened to me... what can i do???? pls help