Vista - Don't care for OneCare!

I successfully installed an update to OneCare yesterday and everything looked fine afterwards.

This morning when I logged on, my desktop was set back to the default desktop - all my shortcuts were removed, my quick launch icons were all missing (only a couple of default ones were there), My Documents had none of MY documents, my browser and email program had been reset to IE and Outlook, and when I opened MY browser and email program (Firefox and Thunderbird) all my accounts, bookmarks and email were missing.

I managed to find my missing documents - somehow.

I did a system restore back to the last save point - apparently the day before yesterday (you'd think a OneCare update would generate a restore point?) and my desktop is now looking as it should. But everything in My Documents is as-at the restore point - I've lost a day and a half of work because of the restore. Almost. New files I created in My Documents yesterday are there (well, SOME are, some are missing). Existing files that I made changes to yesterday have reverted to their prior content.

I was under the impression that System Restore did NOT restore items in the My Documents folder - apparently it seems that's not the case at all.


Now - can anyone tell me if it's possible to get My Documents back to the point it was at yesterday afternoon? The fact that SOME of the new files are still there makes me think/hope my latest-versions are lurking around somewhere just waiting to be found.

And how do I make sure this doesn't happen in the future? The potential of losing my work certainly puts me off the idea of keeping my OS up to date.

Hi,

Sorry to hear Oncare caused all this trouble.

Suggest you get a file recovery app. quickly - almost anything your p c does will be overwriting any deleted files -I have used the free glaryundelete with great success - it also comes as part of the free glaryutilities suite

www.glarysoft.com


or try www.recuva.com

Hope this helps



SIW2

Thanks for the advice. I've just recently (last few months) started making regular backups of my projects - not daily though. Lesson learned!

After a bit more searching around I learned that you can UNDO a system restore, so I copied away what was left of my files (redoing the last 2 days of work is better than redoing EVERYTHING), and went ahead with that. Thankfully, it put back the additional items I'd added, and changes I'd made, to files in My Documents, and I THINK I've been able to merge them together and get back to my latest point. Still going through looking at things, but it's looking promising.

The question remains though - I've found documentation that says System Restore does NOT affect files in My Documents, but in my case it clearly did. Is there something I can do to make sure any kind of Windows system function (update, restore, whatever else it wants to do under the "claim" of helping me) leaves my profile alone - including My Documents?

Hi Shaz,

System Restore only restores System Files, I have used it many times and it does not affect documents or other files...However a program your using can change these files when that application is being restored by Windows like Antivirus, Registry Cleaners & defraggers (They are the cause of 80% of all Windows related errors) System Tweaking utilitys and a few others...Just make sure they are disabled or not used before a restore point is created

Steven

Sorry to hear you had trouble with your system. Since I've successfully been using Live OneCare since it was beta, I would suggest that there may be a combination of affects on your system, since the trouble you've described, I've never encountered, and I'm using it on two vista machines. The Live OneCare support is excellent should you encounter any program irregularities.

Best wishes for smooth PC operations in the future.

Which is what I'd originally assumed.

The files all had .cs and .eff extensions - or at least those are the ones I immediately noticed had reverted to older versions (the .eff files had been removed altogether). These are TGB script files and particle effect files that I've created from the ground up, not system files that any of my apps have modified.

Are .cs and .eff extensions that are used by Windows, or that would be identified as being system files? The ones I'm using are definitely not, so unless two different file types share the same extension, the system restore is touching things it shouldn't.

Sounds to me like you have created a new account and have logged into that after LiveOneCare was installed that would explain everything you have just described and all the files that you created are probably still in the new account. And as was mentioned earlier system restore does not effect documents and settings. I would check all your user accounts for the missing files. Hope this helps but it doesn't explain why you were logged into a different user account in the first place.

I only have one user account, that was created about 2 months ago. OneCare was on the computer when I bought it back then. I signed in this morning using that one account, with the password I've always used, and it accepted it. When I went looking for the missing files, there was only that one user account under C:\Users.

Nice try, but sorry - doesn't explain it in my case

Sorry I could not help but just to be on the safe side have you changed the folder setting to show hidden folders, that should show you the administrator account and guest account in c:\Users. Its has to be worth a try, but it most probably wont be what has happened to you. I think maybe the best thing you can do, like you said, is back up your hard work daily.

yes, I have hidden files/folders turned on by default. The account I "use" is the only "user" account I can see in there. I knew there were one or two others that turn up when I look, but I never look at them, and couldn't recall what they were called (and too lazy to look it up )

Thanks for your suggestions though. I'm still curious if there's something special about .cs and .eff files that makes Windows think they're system files. Apart from that, I think I have everything back the way it should be, and will know to take extra precautions with my important stuff. Maybe I should keep it all out of My Documents completely - this is the first machine where I've just "gone with" Microsoft's leadings and put everything in the suggested spots...