My Documents Folder is Empty

I have a tough one!! a couple of days back a user in my company discovered his (My Documents, Desktop, favorites.... etc) folders are all empty. I went under the C:\Documents and Settings\UserName and surprisingly everything was there but for some reason they were not showing when he opened (My Document) or any other folder directly.

Anyway, I moved the (My Documents) and (Desktop) from under the user profile folder and placed them in the (My Documents) folder and on the (Desktop) everything was fine. Today, he called me again saying everything has dissapeared again! This time nothing is on the (Desktop) or (My Documents) neither under the (UserName) Folder. I tried searching and showing hidden files but nothing is there!! the (internet Favorites) though are showing since I didn't move them that day.

What could have possibly caused that and where is everything gone? I can say for sure they are not deleted and I need a solution that will not need me to use a data recovering software coz this is out of our company policy.


Can anyone help? Appreciate Much

 

Hello Cherry , Welcome to TSG

Please Backup your registry before Trying

1.) Start menu >> Run >> regedit
2.) Now look for
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Explorer/ DocFolderPaths

click the DocFolderPaths folder you should see all the user's folders.

Now add a new string value
value name: your user name
value data: the path to your docs folder ( ex. C:\Documents and Settings\your docsfolder )
Now exit the registry editor

 

Did he install anything new before the problem first occured?

 

Welcome to TSG....

Quote from first post

I have a tough one!! a couple of days back a user in my company discovered his (My Documents, Desktop, favorites.... etc) folders are all empty. I went under the C:\Documents and Settings\UserName and surprisingly everything was there but for some reason they were not showing when he opened (My Document) or any other folder directly.

end quote

Is this your company or do you just work there and call it your company?

 

Hi Sorry for the silence, been away for a while. Actually it turned out that one of the registry keys whs corrupted, what happened is that at some point a temporary profile was created for this guy so this is why My Documents and all other folders where empty. After I moved everything from the "real" profile to the "temporary" profile, and after the next restart the temporary profile was deleted taking away everything that was in there!

All I could do then is to retrieve an earlier backup of the users' PC (about 2 weeks old which was fair enough!)

Now Devil as for your reply, I would love to check those missing files but unfortunately I was advised to format the machine since the registry is corrupted so it's now bye bye

Goku, no he didn't install anything prior to that problem, in fact he shut down his machine and was on 2 week vacation, came back to find this problem.

And Ozrom1e, it is the company I work in... not my company

 

I would offer a suggestion on doing anything to this or anyother computer in the workplace, since these are company computers please to report this or anyother problem to the company for the IT department or company tech for computer to resolve. Companies get kind of fussy about un-authorized people working and crashing the computers at their work place and if any data gets lost that is important it could result in a vacation of the permanent style.

 

Actually I am the in the IT department