Updates Ate my WORD Files

I have a HUGE problem that will takes weeks of manual re-entry if it cannot be fixed.

HELP !!!!!

At first I had an apparent common problem: my user profile, which happened to be the admin profile, stopped working and would show error your user profile was not loaded correctly. You have been logged on with a temporary profile yada yada yada yada. Main problem besides the annoyance was I could obviously not find my documents.

I called Dell tech support. They found all my valuable WORD documents. We then created a new folder and moved all the valuable files to it. So far so good.

Now......Dell tech decides he wants to check for any MS updates. There were 14 updates needed. Downloaded and installed. Same problem with the user profile - but now the WORD documents are GONE. Nowhere. Folder everything gone after the MS updates.

Plenty of free C drive space (like only 30% full) and plenty or RAM, so it should not have needed the disk space.

Problem is after 4 hours the Dell tech could not recover the files. He found some *.temp files but when machine was shut down those disappeared, too.

Machine is running Vista and has been flawless for 7 months until the problem with the user profile.

BTW System Restore will not work. We tried that first thing to try and fix the user profile issue. It returns the message it did not work completly once it brings the desktop back up. It did not work before the Windows update nor after the Windows update.

Where did the WORD doc files go after the MS updates? Am I screwed? Any software available or ways to recover these very valuable lost files? I know I know shoulda woulda backed them up. That's fine - just help me recover the lost files, please !!!!

Have you checked to make sure that 'view folders' is not set to hide system files etc? The updates may have changed some of your settings.
The other thing that you could try is to log on with a different existing profile and see if your files are there.
Try under Windows>Users>'your profile'>AppData & then >Roaming or > Local or >LocalLow etc sub-directories to see if your files have been put in one of those spots. Try it for the different users that are listed.
You could also try a text search for a title or word phrase that you know is in one of the documents you lost.
If it was saved correctly by the Dell technician then it will be somewhere on your HDD, but if the tech. did not ...! You get my drift!

WE found all the roaming extensions, but they were just shortcuts and the shortcuts don't work anymore.

majmac said:

Have you checked to make sure that 'view folders' is not set to hide system files etc? The updates may have changed some of your settings.
The other thing that you could try is to log on with a different existing profile and see if your files are there.
Try under Windows>Users>'your profile'>AppData & then >Roaming or > Local or >LocalLow etc sub-directories to see if your files have been put in one of those spots. Try it for the different users that are listed.
You could also try a text search for a title or word phrase that you know is in one of the documents you lost.
If it was saved correctly by the Dell technician then it will be somewhere on your HDD, but if the tech. did not ...! You get my drift!

Click to expand...

ouch man....it looks like all your files were in your temp* locations...if that was the case they are probably gone...if they were check what majmac said...because that is where all your temp files are located...really sorry dude

Yup.....they are gone. Have no idea why the 14 MS Updates we downloaded and installed would cause legitimate standard normal Word *.doc files to disappear. You can still see the shortcuts but files are nowhere.

Even had a tech look hard drive over. Nothing nada zip zilch zero bye baby bye.

I am starting over with hard drive - XP Pro will be up and Vista gone by this time tomorrow. Vista probbaly cost us 500 hours of lost work. Of course not backing them up was dumb, but normally you can recover MS Office files from a hard drive. Not with Vista in my situation, though. By bye Vista.

markwebb...i have never ever seen windows updates do this...man that must suck terribly...i really wish we could help but it is almost hopeless for us to do anything

markwebb said:

Yup.....they are gone. Have no idea why the 14 MS Updates we downloaded and installed would cause legitimate standard normal Word *.doc files to disappear. You can still see the shortcuts but files are nowhere.

Even had a tech look hard drive over. Nothing nada zip zilch zero bye baby bye.

I am starting over with hard drive - XP Pro will be up and Vista gone by this time tomorrow. Vista probbaly cost us 500 hours of lost work. Of course not backing them up was dumb, but normally you can recover MS Office files from a hard drive. Not with Vista in my situation, though. By bye Vista.

Click to expand...

Vista was not the problem ... the Dell technician was! Perhaps he did not really know how to use the remote assistance!
Any way, sorry about you losing all that work. Hope you can rebuild your records without needing to retype everything again.

Have you tried a file recovery program. There are plenty out there that are free. When a file is deleted from the system all that happens is the link to the file allocation table is brocken. So long as the space on the hd which had the file has not been used you may be in luck.