[dxb335d]

Hi Guys.

Please someone help me. I was using my laptop fine last night, started it up just now and EVERYTHING is gone. My Limewire, MSN, ALL MY THOUSANDS of pics... all my work/personal related documents?

i thought maybe at first id logged on as a guest on my own computer but i havent, still password to get me into my own laptop and now everything is not there?

any idea where i could find it all?

Carlos

[mjh93sa]

Ireland?

In all seriousness it may have somehow changed your user credentials and created a new user under your existing name. Don't ask me how, but we had this with a computer illiterate numpty at work recently.

Take a look in c:\documents and settings for the various users. Then go into each and have a look in the MyDocuments to see if your stuff is still there somewhere.

[dxb335d]

wheres c: firstly ?

[dxb335d]

right matt, ive found my pics

how do i restore the whole thing back to normal?

[mjh93sa]

Good question my leprechaun loving friend.

The way that the SysAdmim team partially resolved it was to create a new user with admin privellages, and then rename the user folders in documents and settings so that the old folder was being used by the "new" account.

This however only restored the the files in my documents and shortcuts on the desktop etc. To restore the pointing of email and such like required intervention within each of the programs in a manner particular to each.

In short, big job and not easy to describe here.

[GarryF]

it's always a good joke when someone says "I've lost my files" to tell them to just restore their backup, you do have one don't you?

Get an external hard disk for £40 and back up once a week onto that once you've resolved your current issues

[dxb335d]

do i ? i dont know? so any clues on how to restore everything to normal. INcluding my desktop picture!

[booforty]

I hope you haven't lost the pics of you and me at Southern Meet 1? The DXB and the Boofighter looked the dogz... We didn't look bad either...

[NFS]

Have you managed to save your porn Carlos ?

Seriously though .. if this is a work laptop you will need to contact your IT guys.

I suspect that you have lost the association between the lap top and the server. Were you messing around with network connections or anything like that before this happened? If this is the case you'll need to take it into the office, so that they can connect it physically to the network and load your account back onto the machine.

[scottc]

Hey Carlos,

If you bring it with you tomorrow I will have a look at it for you. There are a few things it could be doing and one of them could be that you profile has become corrupt and it's now using the default profile. What operating system is it? You may have a system restore point which will take you back to a certain point in time but to use that it would have to be fairly recent.

Worse case is you find the data, get it off and rebuild the box (as long as you have the product key) which doesnt take long. I tend to rebuild mine every six months.

[scottc]

Originally Posted by mjh93sa

Ireland?

In all seriousness it may have somehow changed your user credentials and created a new user under your existing name. Don't ask me how, but we had this with a computer illiterate numpty at work recently.

Take a look in c:\documents and settings for the various users. Then go into each and have a look in the MyDocuments to see if your stuff is still there somewhere.

You may not be able to do this if it's not your own laptop. Each individual user will have permissions to his/hers profile and not others. If you are a local admin on your box or you have domain admin access (which i doubt ) you will be able to access other profiles.

[dxb335d]

Originally Posted by needforspeed

Have you managed to save your porn Carlos ?

Seriously though .. if this is a work laptop you will need to contact your IT guys.

I suspect that you have lost the association between the lap top and the server. Were you messing around with network connections or anything like that before this happened? If this is the case you'll need to take it into the office, so that they can connect it physically to the network and load your account back onto the machine.

Its my own one mate not work

Originally Posted by scottc

Hey Carlos,

If you bring it with you tomorrow I will have a look at it for you. There are a few things it could be doing and one of them could be that you profile has become corrupt and it's now using the default profile. What operating system is it? You may have a system restore point which will take you back to a certain point in time but to use that it would have to be fairly recent.

Worse case is you find the data, get it off and rebuild the box (as long as you have the product key) which doesnt take long. I tend to rebuild mine every six months.

Hi Scott, cheers mate ill bring it tomorrow for you to have a butchers

Carlos

[mjh93sa]

Originally Posted by scottc

Hey Carlos,

If you bring it with you tomorrow I will have a look at it for you. There are a few things it could be doing and one of them could be that you profile has become corrupt and it's now using the default profile. What operating system is it? You may have a system restore point which will take you back to a certain point in time but to use that it would have to be fairly recent.

Worse case is you find the data, get it off and rebuild the box (as long as you have the product key) which doesnt take long. I tend to rebuild mine every six months.

I go for about once a year. But truth be told, if you are in the habit of doing so it does make you keep things in a manner more logical to disaster recovery.

Originally Posted by scottc

You may not be able to do this if it's not your own laptop. Each individual user will have permissions to his/hers profile and not others. If you are a local admin on your box or you have domain admin access (which i doubt ) you will be able to access other profiles.

Good point that I hadn't considered. Actually, whilst one guy was trying to sort out the user corruption on one machine I was having to sort out a guy who had changed his user type from an Administrator to a Debug User, stopping him from doing stuff like running his email client. For an encore he had also changed the admin password to something he'd then forgotten. A quick password blanking through Linux and a slap seems to have sorted that one though.

Your best bet is to get it infront of someone who knows what they are looking for Carlos. You'd better get a bottle of something good incase Scott can work his magic.

[scottc]

Originally Posted by mjh93sa

I go for about once a year. But truth be told, if you are in the habit of doing so it does make you keep things in a manner more logical to disaster recovery.



Good point that I hadn't considered. Actually, whilst one guy was trying to sort out the user corruption on one machine I was having to sort out a guy who had changed his user type from an Administrator to a Debug User, stopping him from doing stuff like running his email client. For an encore he had also changed the admin password to something he'd then forgotten. A quick password blanking through Linux and a slap seems to have sorted that one though.

Your best bet is to get it infront of someone who knows what they are looking for Carlos. You'd better get a bottle of something good incase Scott can work his magic.

Your right it does help plus I am always testing pre release software so you tend to have to rebuild when installing the RTM version.

Dont you just love users, I am glad I dont really have to deal with desktops, I am more server focused now

Carlos more than happy to have a look, do you have an external hard drive or USB stick that you can backup your data to??

[dxb335d]

Originally Posted by scottc

Your right it does help plus I am always testing pre release software so you tend to have to rebuild when installing the RTM version.

Dont you just love users, I am glad I dont really have to deal with desktops, I am more server focused now

Carlos more than happy to have a look, do you have an external hard drive or USB stick that you can backup your data to??

I have a thingy yeah, can they take that amount of stuff? its only a usb type tingy!

[mjh93sa]

Originally Posted by scottc

Dont you just love users, I am glad I dont really have to deal with desktops, I am more server focused now

Well, seeing as I'm the senior mechanical design engineer it's all a bit outside my job description anyway. Still, it makes life a bit more interesting.

[dxb335d]

Started it today and lost all the passwords to forums again and website addresses. Like its starting again every day!?

[E92-Mark]

It does sounds like your local user account info has been lost or messed up. Possibly your registry was corrupted. Take a backup of everything you can find (c:\users\xxx for vista, or c:\documents and settings\xxx\My Documents for xp) and then if you have a restore point, try system restore from the control panel, picking the most recent date before it went to hell.

Failing that if the whole machine is unstable still, you can go back to an OS install disk and boot from it and select restore/repair existing installation. This will usually keep existing user accounts on the disk while repairing the os, and you can then copy your old files to the new account directory.

Hope that helps.

[CrimsonRedE93]

I think its time to get a filofax for to keep your contacts, etch-a-sketch for editing pictures and a copy of Fiesta to replace the internet

Computers, can't live with them and can't live without them, especially when finding the answers to TV gameshows

[SoYank]

I need to ditch my computer and start reading again. Man, what a novel idea.

[kend]

Originally Posted by mjh93sa

Well, seeing as I'm the senior mechanical design engineer it's all a bit outside my job description anyway. Still, it makes life a bit more interesting.

Hit it with a hammer - works for me!