Windows 7: How to recover an overwritten profile

Hi

please help,i renamed a profile folder in windows 7 and when i tried to login with that user a new folder was created and replaced the one i renamed, now i lost all the data which was in my documents, emails etc, i tried to restore to an earlier point but i didn't recover anything, please assist the data is so important to me.

System Restore does not monitor your My Documents folder so it won't restore any files or folders that were overwritten. I would try Recuva portable. Run it off a USB flash drive or external hard drive and try to recover the files you need. Save all recovered files to an External drive

Hello Costatapfumaney, and welcome to Seven Forums.

This is a long shot, but you might see if this may be able to help. Before you do this, backup anything else you do not want to lose to be safe.

First, enable the built-in administator account and log on to it. See if the user folder is there now, and if you may be able to just rename it back to it's original folder name. Restart the computer, and see if you may be able to log on to the renamed account again.



If not, then log back on to the built-in Administrator account and pick up at step 6 in the tutorial below.

User Profile Folder - Change User Account Folder Name

When you get to step 12, look to see if there is a long number S-1-5-.... key that has the user account's original user folder name before you renamed it included in the Data column of ProfileImagePath in the right pane. If found, change the user folder name part of the path to what you renamed it to at step 14. When finished, restart the computer to see if may be able to logon to the renamed account again.

Hope this helps,
Shawn