My desktop suddenly deleted!

I was chatting on Skype (installed about an hour previously), and also had Firefox open. I decided to save someone’s profile pic from FB – when the dialog box opened, it said something like “The location C:\users\roger\desktop is no longer available”.

And it’s gone. My desktop is empty, except for the recycle bin. I keep a LOT of stuff on my Desktop, and it’s all gone. You know what’s coming next… well, yes, I back up every month. Except I’ve just moved house, and my last backup is like January.

This is a minor catastrophe – any ideas what can have happened? Disk scans OK. I’m lost. And so is my data


Thanks

The actual location of your files will be in the Folders under C:\Users\Roger but I'd check there to assure your User name hasn't been changed.

Welcome to the Ten forum @Hogweed,

Try this free tool and see if you get them back:
Download Recuva | Recover deleted files, free!

On startup, make sure to deselect any offer(s) at bottom left and read custom install procedure.

Not a bad idea to install MBP when using Skype:
Malwarebytes for Windows premium 14-day Free Trial | Malwarebytes

Not a bad idea either to create a guess account when chatting.

Go to the Store and see if an update is available for Skype?

If you succeed, please mark it solved to help other users.

All the best,

Thanks guys - yes, I'd though of the obvious stuff like my having accidentally moved it etc. I did a complete C: drive search for a couple of the folders which I kept on the Desktop, eg one called "Today", another "MM" - both are nowhere present on the PC, recycle bin etc.

When it first happened, the Desktop folder itself vanished from C:\users\roger. I rebooted the machine, and it reappeared - but completely empty.

For years, I repaired computers, did IT Support for living etc, and never seen anything like this.

I'll try the recovery utility, and report back...

Try logging out and then logging in again. This happened to me a few days ago on two different pcs after an update. It was something like w10 had created a TEMP user or something.

eLPuSHeR said:

Try logging out and then logging in again. This happened to me a few days ago on two different pcs after an update. It was something like w10 had created a TEMP user or something.

Yeah I've already rebooted a couple of times thanks, and searched for known folder names which were on the desktop on the entire PC - nothing. Just don't exist. Recuva found nothing. Really scary - looking through this and other forums, I see I'm not alone. Thing is, what else might disappear from time to time? I only noticed the desktop was gone because I tried to save something to it...

Well, I figured it out – sadly it doesn't get my files back, but at least I think I know what happened.

I had Yahoo Messenger installed – it wouldn't work, so I tried to uninstall it, but got a message that the install.log was missing. The fix suggested on various forums was that the file was in fact where it should be, but for some reason unwise.exe couldn't find it.

The suggestion was to copy it to the desktop, then browse to there when it asked for it. I did that. Successfully uninstalled. It was shortly after this that I noticed my desktop to be missing.

I surmise, however, that the unwise (what an appropriate name) process deletes whichever folder the install.log is located in! Unfortunately, this deletion is permanent and non-recoverable.

Be careful what you read on forums…