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Spontaneous user account reset, all data gone
I've just received a call from a panicked friend saying her Windows 7 has reset everything. When she turned it on she got the "preparing your desktop" dialog, the icons are just the default ones with hers gone, and the user document directories are empty. The user account does still have her name, so it has been reset - Windows isn't just loading another one. She tried a restore point from three days ago and it changed nothing.
I'll get the computer later today and I foresee profanity in abundance. The absolute priority is to recover the user data, then I'll probably do a reinstall just to be sure.
I haven't had this happen before, so I'm uncertain. Why would Windows just up and reset the user account, and is the data recoverable at all if the folders are all empty? I've told her to stop using it and I plan to see if FreeUndelete can salvage some stuff, but as this is the result of a total user account reset and not just an accidental deletion I have little hope that it'll actually do much of anything.
Any advice, beyond yet again stressing the importance of backups?