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I installed Windows 8 over Windows 7 which ran on my laptop. I chose the custom install with the hope of getting my old files in the Windows.old folder which usually gets created at the end of the installation.
However, when the installation completed, it encountered an error while trying to log in.
User profile cannot be loaded
Then I decided to refresh the OS from the "Advanced troubleshooting" option from the Windows 8 disc. At the end of the whole process, the system logged in but I noticed two Windows.old folders were created.
- Windows.old
- Windows.old(1)
I opened Windows.old(1) and found the folder Users in which there was an account name folder.
Normally, all my data would be in the folder with account name, but I found it empty. I really don't know how to get the important files from my previous OS back, and my hard disk space looks larger than what it should be. Can it happen that my previous OS is still hiding files somewhere?
TobiAwe
Posted 2013-09-28T10:49:22.017
Reputation: 11
I hope you have a backup of your important files. Because, to me, that sounds like you screwed up your Windows installation. Chances are that you won't be able to find and restore any of your personal files, and that you will have to do a new, clean install of Windows. – Samir – 2013-09-28T11:38:42.123
Is this the "user profile cannot be loaded" error you received?
– Samir – 2013-09-28T11:41:03.6031Have you done a clean install of Windows 8, or an upgrade install, e.g. starting Windows 8 installation inside Windows 7? Were you having any of these problems before you installed Windows 8? Why do you have two "Windows.old" folders? When were they created? What's inside the "Windows.old" folder? How much "disk space" did you have? How much do you have now? Did you have more than one partition? How many do you have now? There are just too many unanswered questions for me to even get my head around this problem. You need to explain better what you have done, what errors you see or saw, etc. – Samir – 2013-09-28T11:48:14.540
1Ok,i initailly had 95gig free out of 500 gig when i was still running window7,fad just 2 partitions,the OS and recovery partition and after the install,i av 422 gig free with no recovery partition anymore........as for the the windows.old,itls not empty,it contains the user profile that failed to login,it seems the window refresh i did installed the os again;not sure but that's how it looks like..........the worst part is that i dont av a backup,i already relied on the windows.old folder – TobiAwe – 2013-09-28T12:00:20.920
1It sounds very likely you have overwritten your files you were not suppose to do a "custom install" if you wanted to upgrade to windows 8 – Ramhound – 2013-09-28T12:53:37.937