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Restore APPDATA to default location fails; APPDATA deleted by mistake
PROBABLY EASIEST TO SKIP TO POST #3 for quick summary. @ Yard Dog has offered some help but feels this is over his head and asked other experts to step. Thanks for your help.
======= Older description - probably not necessary to read ===========
During the process of setting up and installing programs on new desktop, I accidentally deleted most of the subfolders under APPDATA and wish to know the best approach to recovering. The details below might be important/unique to my situation and hence influence your expert advice. Briefly my mistake had come about when changing the location of various standard folders e.g. My Documents My Music Dekstop from their default location of C:\Users\name\ to a similarly named sub-folder under D:\myname\ In doing the same thing for each of the 3 subfolders (Local LocalLow Roaming) of APPDATA I was unable to redirect APPDATA\Local, and decided to restore the other two subfolders to their default location and it is during that process that I did something that resulted in deleting a great deal of APPDATA.
Resources I had created:
1) Windows System Restore points from just before installing several programs a few weeks ago. (But some internet forum posts indicate that such restore points would not do anything about deleted APPDATA.)
2) Immediately prior to 1 above I made full backups of C drive as well as Image - Clone - ISO file of entire hard drive including D.
These are stored on an external USB drive; and I have not yet tried to look at their contents.
NOTE: That subsequent to above I had installed about 10 programs but had not done any further backups or Clones.
Goal
A) Restore APPDATA to default locations.
B) Minimize the number of programs I need to install again.
C) Nice, but not critical ... The only important data transferred a few days ago onto new computer was some photos in My Pictures which I had redirected to D, and which are now gone.
DETAILS of what I did that led to deleted APPDATA
My relocating of MY Documents My Pictures Contacts etc. from default location to D went fine. Relocating 3 sub-folders under APPDATA was much more challenging as some files produced an Access Denied message; nonetheless, eventually it seems I was totally successdul with ROAMING and with LOCALLOW, but was unable to relocate LOCAL.
At that point, I tried to use the Restore Defaut button on Location tab in Properties of APPDATA subfolder and while this process started and ran for a short while it then showed some error message that I can not now recall. Per a forum post, I then tried to do this same thing in Safe Mode and when the Dropbox "bin" subfolder under ROAMING stalled the process I made a copy of "bin" and then deleted from within APPDATA; it is that deletion and whatever I did immediately thereafter that also deleted most other subfolders under APPDATA.
I am able to boot normally; however virtually all of my desktop folders and shortcuts are missing; task bar has pinned programs but the color image of prog does not display, yet I am able to launch and use the prog e.g. Adobe Reader.
What do I see first at C:\Users\name\Appdata and second at D:\name\Appdata? Basically it seems that APPDATA is a mixed bag being more complete at default location on C in some instances AND more complete at the new location on D.
At ROOT of APPDATA, roaminguser_gensett.xml in each but D has todays date whereas C shows 9.2.2014
LOCAL only appears in C and shows 32 subfolders (I assume this is complete as I was never able to relocate LOCAL to D.)
LOCALLOW 8 subfolders on C; and only Adobe and Microsoft on D. The two on D are ALSO on C but the date on D is today, and the same subfolder on C is yesterdays date AND while it has for ADOBE some of the same sub-subfolders it is missing the assets subfolder. For the Microsoft folder, C drive is more complete meaning that there are 3 subfolders missing from D e.g. those for locallow\microsoft\Internet Explorer Silverlight and Windows however these sub-subfolders have no files within.
I am NOT going to launch any programs or do anything else until advised. I really appreciate your help in recovering from my stupid error.
Last edited by lite1; 10 Dec 2014 at 18:19. Reason: Put in note at the top