I lost everything on my computer

[Future Raptor Ace]

I had to reboot today and I lost every single thing on my computer. When rebooting it didn’t give me the option to back everything up like it should have. Does anyone know a way to get everything back?

[puffyrock2]

If you did a system restore, there's no way to get anything back that I know of. It's happened to me a couple times, very frustrating.

[Goliath]

If you want to save all of your data, take your hard drive out, hook it up to another computer as a slave drive. Copy all of the stuff you don't want to lose, and burn it to disk. If you don't know how to do it yourself, find someone who does. Whatever you do, don't try to re-install Windows, or you'll lose everything.

[Uméesha]

Originally Posted by Goliath

If you want to save all of your data, take your hard drive out, hook it up to another computer as a slave drive. Copy all of the stuff you don't want to lose, and burn it to disk. If you don't know how to do it yourself, find someone who does. Whatever you do, don't try to re-install Windows, or you'll lose everything.

yep good suggestion there goliath, there is an alternate way of backuping the required files, but this one is the best way of saving your datas!

[lamedog]

Its annoying when that happens. If you can, hook up the hard drive to another computer (like Goliath said) and you may be able to access it directly otherwise there are tools to get back your data even if its been rewritten or even 'lightly' formatted. Most do work well however most also cost, but not much, around $20. Free trails give you hope (allow scans to see the data there but offer no recovery)
If you don't have a second computer, you could buy a new hard drive, set that up as the boot drive with say a trail of XP or vista just to get a working computer, then you can do the above where you hook up the hard drive and try to recover the data.

Note: Do not format your drive. Sometimes after a format you can get the data back but ussually its lost for good.

You may also be able to pay a local computer guy/company to recover your data, but it will cost you a bit.

Do some research online aswell (if you have a spare computer or can buy another hard drive and setup a 'temporary' computer)

Hope this helps.

[fsquared]

Your description is a bit unclear. When you say "reboot" do you mean you just shut off and turned it back on, or did you have to reinstall Windows, or reformat the drive, or ... ?

When you shutoff and turn back on (i.e., reboot), the computer does not ask you to back everything up....usually it doesn't ask you when you reformat either. You usually have to be proactive about backing up stuff. System restore usually won't wipe data files though (just drivers) IIRC. So that we can perhaps help you a little more, what exactly prompted the computer to ask you to, as you say, "reboot", and what did the screen look like and etc.?

[Future Raptor Ace]

Originally Posted by fsquared

Your description is a bit unclear. When you say "reboot" do you mean you just shut off and turned it back on, or did you have to reinstall Windows, or reformat the drive, or ... ?

When you shutoff and turn back on (i.e., reboot), the computer does not ask you to back everything up....usually it doesn't ask you when you reformat either. You usually have to be proactive about backing up stuff. System restore usually won't wipe data files though (just drivers) IIRC. So that we can perhaps help you a little more, what exactly prompted the computer to ask you to, as you say, "reboot", and what did the screen look like and etc.?

Thanks guys for all your help
^I had to totally reinstall windows. My computer is basically the same way I got it out of the box four years ago. I'm really upset because I'm getting a new laptop soon and I was planning on sending some of my programs to my laptop, now I cant do that! My hard drive was totally wiped out with all the programs it used to have.

[Youpidou1]

My computer is shot too. I got the blue screen of death. My computer guy said that something was corrupted and he is going to try and fix it. But if I have to I will have to wipe out everything in the computer and start fresh.

[fsquared]

Originally Posted by Future Raptor Ace

Thanks guys for all your help
^I had to totally reinstall windows. My computer is basically the same way I got it out of the box four years ago. I'm really upset because I'm getting a new laptop soon and I was planning on sending some of my programs to my laptop, now I cant do that! My hard drive was totally wiped out with all the programs it used to have.

Ouch. Sorry to hear that.
Just out of curiosity, what prompted/compelled you to reinstall Windows?

[Blade]

It's all that Porn you've been downloading.

Time to....

C:> Format C: