all user data missing

[nanox5]

I'm a long term committed user of ccleaner... and never had any problems, but today i downloaded the new version, ran a clean, and then all my icons were gone in the taskbar, so i looked further and all my desktop icons were gone, and then i typed in 'windows' in the start menu (vista) to get windows explorer, and it was not there... so by a different route i got to windows explorer and all my user data seems to have gone.

 

when i turned the computer off, and back on, thinking it a glitch, and this would fix it, the recovery console started and insists i must format and start again.

 

any clues or words of advice? i haven't formatted yet....

 

thanks, paul.

[hazelnut]

Sorry to hear about your problem. This, as I am sure you are aware, is not something that usually happens.

 

Had you done anything different the last couple of days? Added a new user account, changed drive letters?

 

Did you clean any custom files and folders?

 

Is anything visible in safe mode?

 

No chance of system restore? Have you tried a livecd?

 

Have you got a back up of your documents such as music and photos?

[nanox5]

hi there, yes i know from experience ccleaner is very reliable. i think the problem may be, that the old version was installed in my user account, and since then, i stopped using the log in, to get away from having to put the password in, so i cancelled the password in user accounts, and then today installed the new version of ccleaner, as i have done many many times before....

 

the recovery console offers to rescue data, and it can see about the right volume of data that i know i have, but cannot write it to my external hard drive (sigh) and while i have a healthy backup of user data, i am a bit heartbroken to lose all the programs, along with pop3 emails which are not backed up.

 

so i suspect all the data is there.... does any of that give you any clue? Paul

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to hear about your problem. This, as I am sure you are aware, is not something that usually happens.

 

Had you done anything different the last couple of days? Added a new user account, changed drive letters?

 

Did you clean any custom files and folders?

 

Is anything visible in safe mode?

 

No chance of system restore? Have you tried a livecd?

 

Have you got a back up of your documents such as music and photos?

[hazelnut]

I think (as I suspect you do too) that the key here is in the user accounts.

 

Are you able to see any of the files at all so you can take ownership of them?

 

By the way are you able to show hidden files and folders?

[nanox5]

there's no windows to look in... when i turn the machine on, it goes straight into recovery console, and safe mode does the same, whatever i try leads me back to the screen asking to format and put back in factory shipped software.... so i don't think there's much i can do.

 

i do think this has been caused by installing the update after changing user settings, so i guess that may be worth looking into. Thanks for help and fast support response, paul.

 

 

 

I think (as I suspect you do too) that the key here is in the user accounts.

 

Are you able to see any of the files at all so you can take ownership of them?

 

By the way are you able to show hidden files and folders?

[hazelnut]

Please let us know how you get on Paul.

 

The only other thing I could think of is using a live cd to boot up the computer and seeing if you could navigate through things via it.