Lost Everything on Windows 10 Install

how can I retrieve my lost data and art work. I have tried everything. thanks

lakoksal2777 said:

how can I retrieve my lost data and art work. I have tried everything. thanks

If you did a clean install .... you can't, unless you had it backed up on a different drive or partition. That's what the "clean" part means in clean install.

I didn't think it did a clean install.

lakoksal2777 said:

I didn't think it did a clean install.

How did you do the install?

lakoksal2777 said:

I didn't think it did a clean install.

On an upgrade you should not have lost your data and artwork. You can try looking for a C:\Windows.old folder and see if it is there - but I don't know if user data gets saved in that folder from the previous version or not. Also, look in C:\Users and check in each of the accounts listed there and see if you created a new account where your data is not - and see if an old account is still there where the data might be.

i think it really important to always backup user-account-data when doing os migration
this save trouble, and it can used for restoring some software setting also

Nothing in old folder

It did it while I was asleep....

ouch. I hope you have backups. For example use Macrium Reflect.

You really need to get someone with the skill to be able to check this drive out. Certainly, an automatic upgrade wouldn't take it upon itself to do a clean install but something has gone wrong.

If the data has been deleted, Data Recovery specialists could very likely retrieve it, at a cost.

So, my advice is to stop using this comp now and get a tech to look it over.