Restarted My Computer and Everything Is Gone Windows 11/10/8/7
It's NOT about a single file loss after restarting a computer but almost everything! People say that restarted my computer and everything is gone in Windows 10 or Windows 11, and that's really a horrible experience, especially they don't know how did this happen and where to find the disappeared files on the hard drive in Windows 10!
| Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
|---|---|
| Fix 1. Switch User Account | If this is your case, try to log the current user account out and log in with your...Full steps |
| Fix 2. Get Off Data | Run Deep Data Recovery on your PC and select the drive...Full steps |
| Fix 3. Run System Restore | Go to "Control Panel -> System and Security -> Backup and Restore...Full steps |
Some Guessings on Huge data loss After Restarting Your Computer
Above all, let's exclude the inevitable consequences of doing a Windows 10 factory restore and formatting a hard disk on purpose. There are perhaps three reasons why you lost everything for no reason after a normal computer restart.
- Virus infection
- Imminent hard drive failure
- Computer suffered a hard crash and couldn't load your profile on the reboot
Confirmed Solutions to "Files Missing After Restart" Issue (3 Ways)
Altogether, three viable solutions are provided here, hope at least one solution works for your case.
Solution 1: Switch the User Account
The first solution might be helpful if it's because of an unexpected computer restart for configuring Windows 10 updates or something related to a system update, it's likely that your computer suffered a hard crash and couldn't load your profile on the reboot. It probably loaded a temporary profile instead, so everything seems to be gone.
- If this is your case, try to log out of the current user account and log in with your own account and password.
- If logging into the user account works, the missing files, folders, and applications should reappear on your computer.
Solution 2: Get Off Data from the Hard Drive and Install a New One
Let's recall some moments. Is your system running slower and slower recently? Are programs crashing or freezing a lot while opening? If yes, it sounds more like a hardware issue than a software issue. Imminent hard drive failure is happening and that would pretty much swallow your data.
To solve the problem, you can only choose to replace the problematic hard drive before it's too late. Otherwise, more data loss will occur in the future.
Since it's already a failing hard drive, the best way to rescue data as much as possible is to copy the old hard drive to a new one, and use Qiling hard drive data recovery software to perform data recovery after hard drive replacement.
Step 1. Select file types
Launch Deep Data Recovery. Select file types and click "Next" to start.
Step 2. Scan the hard drive partition
Select the drive on your hard disk where you lost or deleted files. Click "Scan" and let Qiling data recovery software scan for all lost data and files on the selected drive.
Step 3. Check the results
When the scan completes, you can apply the "Filter" feature or click the "Search files or folders" option to find the lost files on the hard drive.
Step 4. Restore lost hard drive data
Select wanted files that you lost on the drive and click "Recover" to save them to another location.
- To copy data from a hard drive to a new one, you can ask this sector by sector recovery tool for help.
- To recover data on a new hard drive, run Deep Data Recovery and take the three steps.
Solution 3: Perform a System Restore
If you feel uncertain about the real causes of this data loss disaster, perhaps doing a system restore could save you from the frustrating moment.
- Warning
- Restoring the system to an earlier state could certainly restore all the missing data and applications, however, the latter saved data after this restore point would be erased. You can still undo the system restore.
This is how you do a system restore to a time before you had this problem:
"Control Panel -> System and Security -> Backup and Restore -> Restore files from backup"
Bonus Tip - Back Up Your Data to Avoid Data Loss
At this point, people would realize the importance of a backup. Yes, it's better late than never. Here, my suggestion is backing up data to external devices or cloud storage like (Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox).
To create a backup for your files, you need backup and restore software. I recommend Qiling free backup software. It's free software to back up and restore files and systems. It supports all the basic backup solutions, including file backup, partition backup, system backup, and disk backup.
It's still disk cloning software, which allows you to clone a system, disk, or partition. After that, you can directly use the cloned disk to replace the disk having problems.
Follow the details to back up files to an external hard drive:
Step 1. Click "File backup" button in the Backup and recovery page to initiate a backup.
Step 2. Local and network files will be displayed on the left side. You may extend the directory to choose which files to back up.
Step 3. Select the location where you want to store the backup by following the on-screen instructions.
Step 4. Click "Options" to encrypt the backup with a password in "Backup Options". There are a variety of other customization options available for the backup process.
Setup a backup schedule and choose to initiate a backup at a certain event in "Backup Scheme".
Step 5. You may save the backup to a local disk, Qiling' online service, or a NAS.
Step 6. To begin backup, click "Proceed" Once the backup process has been finished, it will be shown as a card on the panel's left side. To further manage a backup job, right-click it.
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