Any way to recover partitions deleted by Windows Update gone bad?

This morning my computer notified me that it had to reboot to install updates. (This was a routine Windows Update notification, nothing suspicious about it.) When the reboot finished, all of my hard disk's partitions except drive C were gone. In their place was a single unallocated space. This took out all of my data files and most of my applications' profiles.

I can restore most of this data, but the process will be time consuming and incomplete. Before I do it, is there any hope of recovering the partitions that Windows Update blew away?

As to deal with partitions is a risky task, ask Jumanji for help.
https://www.sevenforums.com/members/jumanji.html

Thank you for the reference, but how do I leave him a message? I see others' messages on his page but I don't see a "Leave message" link, and when I searched the page for "message" I found none.

No need to contact jumanji. He is Omni-present , but kept quiet since Brink had given you three options to read and try.

Follow option 2 in the tutorial Brink has mentioned in post #3. That is, use Partition Recovery Wizard in MiniTools Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1 Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free

Launch PartitionWizard, on the left Pane click on Partition Recovery Wizard > Next > Select your Drive > Next > Full Disk > Next > QuickScan > Next. Allow the quick scan to complete. At the end of the quickscan you will get a window showing all the found partitions (like the one below).



Post a screenshot of it. After you have taken the screenshot click on Cancel button on that Window and close PW. You can run it again after getting further instructions from me.

Also mention how many partitions ( volumes ) you had on that drive apart from C:

If more than the number of partitions that was there is shown that means your drive had been formatted more than once and/or changes were made after the first format.( just like two audio volumes in my screenshot) You have to select the correct partitions that will show your drive as before in the preview map below the partitions found list without any unallocated space. That is the reason why I want to examine the screenshot..

Thank you, Jumanji and Bear. I'll do that and report back -- by Monday I hope. Right now I have some priorities in my offline life that are even higher than recovering my data, so I'm not sure exactly when it will happen.

As for how Windows Update could cause this problem -- it is fooling around with Windows' basic operating software, so I don't find that surprising. I can't trace cause to effect, since I rarely know what Windows Update is doing anyway, but over the yeas I've had disruptive things happen to my system immediately after a Windows Update on several occasions.

After I recover from this incident I'm going to take steps to my data security, and those may include disabling Windows Update, along with tightening up my backup procedures.

Here is the screen shot. The program I got is v7.0, but I downloaded it from the publisher's web site, so I don't think I'm going to find a later one.

The UI was not as you described it, probably because the version is different. There was no wizard interface and no "Quickscan" button. I just got this page when I clicked "Lost Partition Recovery."

The partitions listed are a complete set. The amount of data is far less than the drive sizes, but much more than the free program's 1 GB recovery limit. I'd guess there is a total of about 10 GB.

"Follow option 2 in the tutorial Brink has mentioned in post #3. That is, use Partition Recovery Wizard in MiniTools Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.1 Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free "

You didn't do what I wanted you to do. Best Free Partition Manager for Windows | MiniTool Partition Free