isitmondayet

No apologies, please. You don't know what I know, and vice-versa. I just shared to allow speaking at a higher language of troubleshooting (god forbid we have to talk through all the steps to access control panel, or clear internet cached files - ugh). Google is my friend (sooooo much better than Netscape/AOL). I was having a local account issue (my settings had become more hardened and it was confusing me - but at this point if I have to re-install Widows I'm running kill disk first) but this led me to trip over the Elevated Admin stuff, but that didn't help either. Although, I was crazy

nukecad - 1st: Thank-you very much for the thorough response. It is GREATLY appreciated. 2nd: I've been working with technology/computers/infrastructure for at least 36 years. Having been through countless fire drills (usually for everyone else) panicking just doesn't happen for me. After re-adding some more the more used apps (MS Office is entirely gone) and futzing with Windows 10 update - I grabbed a recovery tool and let that run for about 14 hours. I decided on Disk Drill. It finds EVERYTHING and unfortunately renames all files vs. leaving the original file name partially intac

What the heck happened? I installed the Trial version last night and proceeded to analyze, then clean-up my PC. It was taking a bit of time so I left and came back about an hour later and there was a message to restart my PC, so I clicked OK. Then as it's restarting, Windows 10 was installing a lengthy update (this surprised me, I don't recall an update in pending status). Logging in took some time and then BAM! That's not my desktop, all my Taskbar shortcuts are gone, no MS Office anymore, all my document folders/files/photos are gone... the disk drive free space is only a frac