Windows 7 and lost desktop files

Hi everyone, I have a problem. I used a Windows 7 laptop for a presentation and we all saved files onto the desktop of a user's account. Upon shutdown and log-in to this same user's account, the message "Preparing your desktop" shows instead of "Welcome", and all files from the desktop is gone... I have done searches from the administrator's account, searches from within this user's account, wildcard searches, but the files are nowhere to be found.

Anyone know where these files might be 'saved' to? Thanks in advance for any help!

transpose said:

Hi everyone, I have a problem. I used a Windows 7 laptop for a presentation and we all saved files onto the desktop of a user's account. Upon shutdown and log-in to this same user's account, the message "Preparing your desktop" shows instead of "Welcome", and all files from the desktop is gone... I have done searches from the administrator's account, searches from within this user's account, wildcard searches, but the files are nowhere to be found.

Anyone know where these files might be 'saved' to? Thanks in advance for any help!

they might be in recycling, or be hidden. You can attempt to recover them by using a 3rd party app like recuva.

It might also simply be a case that the index needs to be rebuilt.


Ken

Hi Ken and surfasb,

Thanks for your quick replies! Sorry I didn't elaborate; I've already turned-on "Show hidden files", and have checked my 'Users" folder, but there wasn't any other profiles saved. I've checked the sizes of the other profiles there too (they were my colleague's) and they're all the same sizes with the same number of files... and I'm afraid that means this profile which was used (Guest) might have been over-written?

I've also checked the Recycling Bin of all the profiles, and the files are not there. Does that mean... this is it?

Ken: Thanks for your recommendation, I'll go check Recuva out. But what do you mean by rebuilding the index?

In addition to trying out what Ken said, you can try the following:

1) Run a sfc / scannow command from an elevated command line. Heres a tutorial.

SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker

2) If Step 1) doesnt help, follow the steps in this link to fix a corrupted user profile.

Fix a corrupted user profile

Hi again, just to update. I've given up hope that those files will be found, as I'm pretty sure they're deleted (one way or another), and I don't wanna spend to retrieve them. Thanks for all your help; really appreciate it!