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The operating system logged in the user as "temporary" user profile (TEMP).
All the files were missing from desktop, documents, etc..
The user navigated into "c:\users\" and found the files under his original profile.
Without knowing what he was doing, he moved all the files into his desktop folder... Not knowing that he was logged in as TEMP user profile.
The user restarted the computer, but now the operating system logged the user into the original user profile. And all the files were missing again.
The files are most likely inside the TEMP user profile. But its not possible to see or find that USER profile folder.
its not hidden, its just not there...
So the TEMP user profile is gone, the TEMP user folder is gone... with all his files from desktop, documents and pictures.
I installed "Recuva" data recovery program. But it cannot find any traces of the files.
Recuva can find some files from "c:\users\temp*.* " But none of the files from desktop, documents or pictures because he moved them into the TEMP user.
Recuva can not find any traces of the files in the original user profile folders.
So what is left todo ?
What software can recover from this horrible horrible thing.
The files are most likely somewhere... The user turned off the computer and I removed the hard drive from the computer so that it would not overwrite anything.
its just strange that Recuva cannot find any traces of anything, anywhere.
Someone have any experience in this ?
Aron
Posted 2019-08-14T17:51:23.863
Reputation: 1
What is left to do? I think the files are really gone, so this is a lesson for the user: if they don't know what they're doing, they should not just do something... – LPChip – 2019-08-14T18:13:48.130
@LPChip Why do you say the files are really gone.. They must be on the hard drive.. Files don't just vanish into thin air, even if you completely delete them from the system.. They act as shadow files that will be overwritten as soon as the operating system writes over the hard drive data blocks... So the data is somewhere on the blocks. – Aron – 2019-08-14T18:20:14.237