Unexplained Restored Windows 7 Home Premium

jamocha64 · 26 Nov 2016

I have a laptop, ACER Aspire 5253 that belongs to my Grandpa. He was running the free upgrade to Windows 10 just fine. He called me to come help him because something had gone "crazy" on his computer and he didn't understand. When I got there, I see that the computer had "restored to windows 7 home premium". He says all that he did was turn it on in the morning and it asked him questions about Windows 7 and he just pushed a few keys and then he thought "oh no, I better call for help".

So I have looked through the entire computer and I see no restore points. I see his user profiles but his user files and documents are not the current versions.

Any thoughts on what is causing Windows 10 to restore back to the original operating system? I also see that there is no operating system licenses now. This is a good Laptop and was brand new for him when it was purchased a few years ago. I have him looking for any cd's etc. that may have come with this unit. Of course, he had not backed up his files in a very long time. I am just heart broken for he had just written his 3rd book and quite possibly lost his writings.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks
Jamocha64

dalchina · 26 Nov 2016

Maybe the original manufacturer's recovery partition was still present, and somehow the process of restoring the PC to 'as bought' was started. Recovery of anything under those circumstances could only be undertaken by an expensive professional firm, I would think.

It's so sad and unnecessary to lose important data. We strongly and repeatedly recommend the routine use of disk imaging (e.g. Macrium Reflect (free) and its boot medium and external storage.

This means you can recover from a failed hard disk, ransomware, an unbootable PC... probably without technical help. The images also act as a backup from which you can extract files.

Supplement that with a good more frequent backup routine for critical data if necessary.

System Restore is entirely irrelevant in this circumstance (it only protects drivers, registry, system files... never user data) - quite limited. And the original restore points applied to Win 10- so don't exist any more.

alphanumeric · 26 Nov 2016

Yeah, it sounds like it did a factory recovery. Hard to say why though? If it was upgraded to Windows 10 and activated with a digital license, you can just upgrade again, or do a clean install of Windows 10. System restore points are wiped/erased when you upgrade to Windows 10, or do a go back to the original OS. The go back option is only available for 30 days after doing the free upgrade so it must have been a factory recovery to the OOBE, Out Of the Box Experience. That's my best guess anyway.