My son deleted the User folder on his laptop. Help would be awesome.

[Xuluu]

Hey guys,

So my 14 year old son deleted the User folder (which I believed contained the App Data folder) off his laptops C:/ drive and now the OS doesn't even start. There is no login no nothing. Just a blank screen where you would normally login and a power button in the right hand corner. I can still boot to bios and he did have a restore point set up recently. Only problem is we can't do a restore because it looks like windows has been obliterated. Anyone got some advice? It would be greatly appreciated!

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

do you mean the

C:\users

or c:\users\username

if C:\users was deleted then I expect you will have to re install Windows again

Was the original OS Windows 10 or was it a free upgrade from 7 or 8?

Some laptops have recovery partitions which can take the laptop to as delivered state.
[Read the user manual for laptop]

You may want to recover files which were not backed up before re installing Windows.
If so consider booting the laptop from a recovery disk running Windows PE or Linux (example Hirens boot CD)
This will also confirm what folders were deleted.

Or removing the hard drive and plugging it into a USB tray or SATA port of another PC

Then using free recovery/Undelete software such as Piriform Recuva or CGSecurity TestDisk PhotoRecovery

regards
Mike Barnes