Solved: Icons still show, but everything is gone......

I came home last night and got back on my laptop. When I turned it on some message came on after I put in my password, something about programs, then my screen came up with all my icons. My background pic that I had was gone, it was now Gateway, (like it reset itself), so I went into my pictures to reset it and all my Pictures, documents, etc.. are gone. I have no idea how to retrieve them. I did a full virus scan, and there is no viruses, etc on it, so can anyone please tell me whats going on? Another thing that I noticed is everytime I turn my laptop off, and turn it back on, everything I did as far as changing my homepage is gone as well, even all the sites I just visited,like it keeps resetting. Someone replied with a link that gave me some things to do, but none of it worked. I did system restore and it said nothing has been changed, I tried doing new user account but nothing is transferring to it.
I have no idea how to retrieve these files. All the icons are there, but everything is gone from them. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

 

I just found this under the start menu and I'm doing it now. It's a Files and Settings Transfer Wizard, and I see all my files, so my qustion is, when it is done with the transfer, where do I put it? It's obviously still on computer, so how do I retrieve them?

 

if you go to My Computer what are the properties for your C drive ? Specifically looking for your Hard Drive capacity and space remaining/used ...

 

total size-49.0 GB
free space-20.4 GB

 

I'm not sure about using files and settings transfer wizard on a laptop (unless you have an external drive you can save to ) . I dont think it is intended to back up to the same hard drive it is transferring from .

 

Can you browse to C/Documents and Settings and look in the various profiles there for your data ? It still looks like a corrupt user profile as the data is obviously there going by the occupied space .

 

I don't know either, but I saw all the files that were being transferred, so where are they? This is so weird!!!! They are stored somewhere on here, but getting them back onto my desktop is my question

 

let me see real quick

 

okay I clicked on documents and settings, then there are several folders and the one named owner has all my documents and pictures. How do I get them back on my desktop?

 

Copy the contents of each folder to your username folder - e.g. open C/documents and Settings/Owner/Owner's Documents/Owner's Pictures . Open your current My Pictures folder . Copy from Owner to yours then delete from Owner's . That's the basic idea anyway but remember to empty the recycle bin when you are happy your documents are safely recovered to your profile or you'll soon be running out of space .

Computer is telling me to go to bed now so good luck and will check back tomorrow to see how you got on !

 

Ok...Everything is back to normal. I have one more issue. My favorites. When I click on favorites it used to go down a list, now I have to click on the star and it takes me to the documents folder that has the favorites stored, and I have to then click on the one i want. Is there a way to get the list back so that I'm not clicking on the folder, then the one I want?
Thanks for your help, and is there a reason this did happen so that I can do something to prevent it?

 

Sounds like when you copied the favorites from the corrupt profile to the one you are now using, you copied the entire folder, instead of the contents.

Look under c:\Documents and Settings\username\Favorites and see if there is a folder named Favorites, i.e. c:\Documents and Settings\username\Favorites\Favorites

If so, move everything from the 2nd favorites folder to the first one, then delete the 2nd folder.

As for why it happened, who knows. power surge, cosmic ray, something caused a disk error, then when chkdsk corrected it the profile happened to be corrupt, so Windows creates a new one.

HTH

Jerry

 

I never moved them. When I couldn't figure out how to, I just looked under my favorites and the star was there so I clicked on it and there it was...I just don't know how to get it in the format in which is was before, which was a list going down, now its in a closed folder. When I right click and do a move to, it just says folders, so I'm clueless on how 2 do this one.

 

Ok, I was assuming that you copied everything from C:\Documents and Settings\Owner to whatever folder your profile is now in per post 10.
Anyways, sounds like a shortcut to the Favorites folder that has your favorites has been created.
When you click the star, and the folder opens, is the full path shown in the location bar? Probably C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Favorites? If it just shows Favorites, do the following:
In the Favorites window that opens, Click Tools | Folder Options
Click the View tab
Check the box for Display full path in address bar (about 6th from top)
OK back to the folder, it should now show the full path.
Leave this window open, well call it folder 1.

Now we need to find out where the profile you are using is being stored.

Click Start | Run type CMD then press enter
type Set user then press enter
You should see three values
USERDOMAIN=Computername
USER=username
USERPROFILE=C:\Documents and Settings\username
The two username values may not match.
The path shown for USERPROFILE should be different than the path shown in folder 1. If it's the same then I'm not sure why it's doing what it is.

If they are different, then we just need to copy the favorites from the folder 1 window to the Favorites folder in the current profile
Click Start | Run and type %userprofile%\Favorites

This should open another folder window to the Favorites folder in the current profile. I suspect it just a a shortcut named favorites.
You just need to drag the favorites from folder 1 to this folder, then you can delete the Favorites shortcut. You can do this back in IE from the favorites menu once you confirm everything is working, just right click it and choose delete.

 

okay the display full path was checked already. I still have to go through the folder.