Not sure what happened, personal files disappeared

[craigsnedeker]

My sister is having troubles with her Vista, and I am rather confused. I have never seen this happen before, and I'll try to explain it based on what I know.

- Her computer was slow/freezing, so she restarted like she normally does.
- When her computer booted, the desktop was factory restory; her folders were gone, icons rearranged, wallpaper reset, and a sidebar which she had previously removed.
- All her personal files in My Documents, My Pictures, etc no longer exist.
- All her programs and games that she has downloaded/installed still exist, like Chrome, Paint Shop Pro, etc.
- There are a few pictures in her Recycling Bin, but that is all.

I tried a system restore, but no backups exist.

Someone suggested it signed her on as a guest or as a different user, as the path URL to the desktop is c:/user/temp/desktop.

I am currently running TestDisk so we shall see if that yields any results.

My question is, what happened and can I restore her files?

 

[craigsnedeker]

Update: My dad found files in C/Users and he found the old files in /debra. For some reason the computer made a new user in /temp but at the same time, only one user exsists on the computer (make sense?)

 

[ex_bubblehead]

A corrupt profile will cause Windows to create a temp profile (which disappears upon reboot/logoff). Sometimes it's only transitory and a logoff/logon is all that's required. However, if the profile is truly corrupt then a new one needs to be created and data from the old one migrated. This can be accomplished by renaming the old profile folder while logged in as another admin user (I just add ".old" to the name) and logging the affected user in. This will create a new, empty profile. You can then simply copy the contents of "Desktop", "Documents", "Favorites", "My Pictures", "My Videos" from the old profile to the new.

 

[craigsnedeker]

Will give those a try tomorrow, thanks.