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 hopeful. I'm on the fence about DD (not due to quality or performance - it's my expectations) - it's very different from recovery tools I've used in my career. It appears to be insanely thorough and I'm waiting for a reply back from DD techs. It found almost 1TB of files (from a 500 GB drive) which totaled 872GB in file size (the free version of DD only recovers 500MB). So, it's finding way more than what I lost last week and their filter (to eliminate locating files past a certain date) isn't working for me. Also with DD instead of providing a partial name of the original file (just replace the question mark with a random character), it renames all files with a nondescript File00000.doc, File00001.doc, etc. Tonight I circled back around to preview some files (now that I have MS Office and wanted to review what DD found) and I have locked up DD - just sent them an error report/dump and mentioned my inquiry - hopefully I'll get some questions answered. But I will look for other recovery tools/feature in between this gap. I still have friends and was able to install Office on st Sunday (free too - MY absolute favorite four letter word). But thanks for the Softmaker tip... 'cause I really LOVE free stuff. Thanks again for your reply and info!! Bob <eom>

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 intact - minus the question mark in front. I never logged into a temp user account (that was an interesting thought and it did make me double check). I have three accts: Admin, myself, and my wife. I had logged into all three and only my wife's took a bit of time to let me in. Admin access was normal. I also did the rollback, but that didn't do anything helpful, in fact it had to go back and re-do all the re-adding of apps and re-installing Disk Drill again. It suxs that I'll likely have to purchase MS Office - it was Office 2010 SP2 (2013? 2014?). Being retired now I realize how spoiled I was with countless CDs lying about with the latest Windows or Office on them. : / Thanks again for your feedback!

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 fraction of what it was. I never in a million years thought this would be an invasive software. SOB! ...and of course my backup is older than sh!t... SOB! ::sigh::