My daughter upgraded to Windows 10 on her laptop recently. She lost all of her word documents and most everything else that was saved on her computer. Has this happened to anyone else and is there a way to get the files back? She is a college student and has lost all of her school files from the last three years.
Is their a Windows.old folder on her C-drive when upgrading your OS windows will create this folder. Its a backup of all the files on computer before the upgrade. Also......if she did a image backup before upgrading, or maybe a restore point that is available.
The Windows.Old folder might be the best method thou.....IF its still on her C-drive
There is a windows.old folder but she isn't finding anything in the folders within windows.old. If she goes back to Windows 7 will it restore all of her stuff? She did not do a backup prior to the upgrade.
This is also a good teaching moment. It isn't important if it's not backed up. If it is, back it up.
No, restoring to Windows 7 will not bring the file back.
Try installing Everything Search and let it start when the install ends so it builds it's index. Usually take 20 to 30 seconds.
Then in the search line enter
ext:doc and ext:docx
See if any of the files are found.
If yes, right click on one and select Open path.
MiniTool Power Recovery might do the trick. There are several very good folder/file recovery programs, free and fee. It will not be easy - this recovery process.
Recuva is another free recovery software that works very well.
Do you have the habit of automatic backup ? I am using OneDrive for backup . If yes , you can recover your files from backup up . If not , open up the C drive where you find the "old windows" file, instead of clicking on "old windows" just click on the "users" file in the current version. All of your old stuff should be accessible from there. If you delete it, maybe your could not find your files back. You can also try their proposal , try some data recovery tool , recuva , easeus and so on .
I went from 8.1 to windows 10 on both my Surface Pro2 and my HP desktop and all my files, word documents, etc are still there.
Quote