Question Windows 7 rebooted - lost pretty much everything

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thebone

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Feb 26, 2010
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Hey folks.

Something weird happened and I am kinda rusty as my machine had been stable forever.

So My PC has Windows 7 ultimate.

I tried to launch my media server on my roku, no such luck. Thought "oh, PC must have rebooted"

So sure enough I went into my office and it was asking for me to login. Password didn't work, which was odd.

So I used password recovery software and set it to blank password, rebooted back into the machine.

But then I noticed my desktop was blank except for the recycle bin which I thought was odd. The GIU now looks like Windows classic, not Windows 7. Again odd.

I didn't see icons loading in the task bar so I went into all programs from the start menu and noticed most of my apps are gone. Like 90% gone.

So I decided to go into my C drive to maybe look at my windows/old folders and that is when I noticed immediately upon entering My Computer that all my drives, save where the OS is loaded, have 100% free space. Like everything is gone ? 6 TB of files gone. No Windows.Old folder.

I tried looking in user accounts but there is only the admin account in there. It doesnt appear that I am logged into a guest account.

Any suggestions for things I should do/try ?

I am not sure what happened. Friday night I went to sleep on the couch watching shows from my media server on a roku.

Sometime between 1 am and 5 pm Saturday, everyting just...poof. Went awry.

Any help is greatly appreciated !

Thank you in advance !
 
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Thank you. I apologize for the low quality, not screencap software on PC so used my phone.

zCjUZdW.jpeg
1s4B0n8.jpeg
 
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SkyNetRising said:
No screencap software necessary.
Use PrntScr button, then paste into mspaint.

kinsta.com

How to Take a Screenshot on Windows (7, 8, 10), and Save and Edit Them

Learn how to screenshot on Windows PCs in any format, including video grabs. We'll show you how to do it on Windows 7, 8, and 10.
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fair point.

but browsers and outlook gone so kinda leery about installing anything right now until I figure out what is going on. know what I mean ? I saw one article that said don't make any changes yet, so...
 
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It is probably a compression thing but its a 5 tb drive and 1 tb drive

I know the usable space is 4500 gb and 930 gb

So I guess rather than using the manufacturer "5 tb" I should have said 4.5
 
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thebone said:
It is probably a compression thing but its a 5 tb drive and 1 tb drive

I know the usable space is 4500 gb and 930 gb

So I guess rather than using the manufacturer "5 tb" I should have said 4.5
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It looks like everything was deleted when you used the password recovery software. If you don’t have backups, it would have been better to disconnect the drives with all of the media and proceed with using the software. If you don’t have backups, it looks like everything is gone.
 
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Oh drat.

Sounds like I have a fun next few months ahead of me rebuilding the library

Any idea why though the GUI is showing classic and not W7 default ?

I never ever once selected classic. Part of me wonders if its related
 
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thebone said:
Oh drat.

Sounds like I have a fun next few months ahead of me rebuilding the library

Any idea why though the GUI is showing classic and not W7 default ?

I never ever once selected classic. Part of me wonders if its related
Click to expand...
What tool did you use for the password recovery? It sounds like it maybe replaced the operating system with Windows 7 classic.
 
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Lazesoft

and drat, now that you mention it, I think I did choose classic.

probably a good lesson not to do stuff when you've been awake 27 hours in a row.

ugh

thank you.

but there is the other issue. after a reboot my password ceased to be recognized which is what facilitated the need for PW recovery.

I absolutely had not changed it before that. I log in remotely every day multiple times and manually type the PW so I was not using the wrong one

edit - I am sure I accidentally wiped windows by choosing the wrong option but I'm still mystified by why my password suddenly was no good
 
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According to everything I just read on Lazesoft, password recovery does just that, recover the password of any (user/Admin) account when you boot via the cd/usb. There won't be any choice of which UEI or any such. Just recovers or deletes the password.

Leaving only 1 viable option. Got hacked, which isn't that hard because the user already had remote access enabled.
thebone said:
I log in remotely every day multiple times
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Not that hard to reset windows to factory default, which would have wiped out all user files and left a blank password or whomever accessed it remotely changed the password.

It's Sad, really Sad, but there are ppl who will do that, just because they can. If you go through Dell troubleshooting on a tech level, they'll ask specifically for someone to enable remote access temporarily and then double check to make sure it's disabled after, but in the mean time, the tech has full working access to everything in the pc
 
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Thats the weird part. I was certain I had set remote to allow specific users, in this case myself only on my laptop which is upstairs when I don't feel like walking down to the basement.

I still cant wrap my head around why most apps are gone but not all. For example, Hard Disk Sentinel, Sisoft Sandra, NOIP.

I am not doubting you so please don't take that as me saying you are wrong. Im just trying to wrap my head around it. I was assume if someone hacked their way and did a factory, those apps wouldn't be installed still as they are not native Windows apps
 
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One other thing. Z drive is a partition off the main C

it is showing about 8 GB consumed yet when I enter the Z drive, absolutely zero folders or anything. I tried to use the show hidden files, but still nothing. Something is consuming about 8 gb somewhere on there
 
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thebone said:
Thats the weird part. I was certain I had set remote to allow specific users, in this case myself only on my laptop which is upstairs when I don't feel like walking down to the basement.

I still cant wrap my head around why most apps are gone but not all. For example, Hard Disk Sentinel, Sisoft Sandra, NOIP.

I am not doubting you so please don't take that as me saying you are wrong. Im just trying to wrap my head around it. I was assume if someone hacked their way and did a factory, those apps wouldn't be installed still as they are not native Windows apps
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If you had been hacked someone could have removed some software and formatted/erased the drives. If the remote option was only allowed for specific users, they could have accessed your user account.

Personally, I would upgrade to Windows 10 if the computer supports it. If not, you could probably use a lightweight Linux distribution such as Ubuntu for use as a media server.


thebone said:
One other thing. Z drive is a partition off the main C

it is showing about 8 GB consumed yet when I enter the Z drive, absolutely zero folders or anything. I tried to use the show hidden files, but still nothing. Something is consuming about 8 gb somewhere on there
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You might not have permission to read certain folders in that drive. At this point, it’s probably best to start from scratch by reinstalling Windows 7 or Windows 10 (if possible).
 
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A random hacker does not randomly uninstall "some" applications.
Nor would they delete 100% of the apparently lost 6TB.

Someone known to you, maybe. Someone playing a nasty prank.

But again, this is where a good backup routine comes into play.
 
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Cj-tech said:
If you had been hacked someone could have removed some software and formatted/erased the drives. If the remote option was only allowed for specific users, they could have accessed your user account.

Personally, I would upgrade to Windows 10 if the computer supports it. If not, you could probably use a lightweight Linux distribution such as Ubuntu for use as a media server.



You might not have permission to read certain folders in that drive. At this point, it’s probably best to start from scratch by reinstalling Windows 7 or Windows 10 (if possible).
Click to expand...
You are probably right.

I'll probably go to 10 now that 7 is obsolete
 
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