Recovery of profile picture

Not entirely sure this is the appropriate sub to ask this, but I hope so. . .





Due to a hard drive crash, I lost my stored photos (yes, I was a fool for not having this important folder backed up! I've learned that lesson!)


But, my profile picture in the windows menu is still there, so, it must be stored elsewhere. Where might the picture be stored, so I can at least recover that one?


As always, thanks for reading!


-R

Hi Zoloft,

Zoloft said:

Not entirely sure this is the appropriate sub to ask this, but I hope so. . .

Due to a hard drive crash, I lost my stored photos (yes, I was a fool for not having this important folder backed up! I've learned that lesson!)

But, my profile picture in the windows menu is still there, so, it must be stored elsewhere. Where might the picture be stored, so I can at least recover that one?

Did you save it to where the default profile pictures are stored or somewhere else?

You could try => C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\User Account Pictures\Default Pictures

I hope this helps!

I believe default, because I did not change any options (to the best of my memory) when I set the profile picture. But, sadly, it's not in the Default Pictures folder, nor elsewhere in the User Account Pictures directory. I greatly appreciate the start!

check this location:
C:\Users\[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Local\Temp

Hi Zoloft,

Zoloft said:

I believe default, because I did not change any options (to the best of my memory) when I set the profile picture. But, sadly, it's not in the Default Pictures folder, nor elsewhere in the User Account Pictures directory. I greatly appreciate the start!

If you can remember what you named it, you could do a HDD search for it!

J.R. said:

check this location:
C:\Users\[YOUR USER NAME]\AppData\Local\Temp

not in there, or any of the other directories in the temp folder (hidden files visible), but thanks!

Paul Black said:

Hi Zoloft,



If you can remember what you named it, you could do a HDD search for it!

another excellent thought. I used the program search everything, set to include hidden and system folders, and searched . . . nothing was found with the file name. Seems windows my provide it with a different name when saving it. . . but, again, I greatly appreciate all the tips!

Hi Zoloft,

Zoloft said:

another excellent thought. I used the program search everything, set to include hidden and system folders, and searched . . . nothing was found with the file name. Seems windows my provide it with a different name when saving it. . . but, again, I greatly appreciate all the tips!

Try searching for the suffix .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .tif, .tiff etc depending on what format it was!

I hope this helps!

For searches I've been using FileSeek, earlier free, now fee, for some time. It really does the job of finding X if X still exists, wildcards are welcomed.

Also, all hope is not yet lost! Do you have a puppy linux or any other USB or DVD boot with a search utility on it? If so, boot it, and do the search that way. The longer Windows stays ON, the more stuff
can be overwritten.