Windows 7 lost profile data

[korova_blue]

Have had a strange problem with both my Windows 7 PC and one other Windows 7 PC with exactly the same problem. When I logged on this morning it created a new profile for me, however it has also deleted all the information from my old profile and every other profile on the PC! The folders for the profiles are still under the 'users' folder, however all the information in them has disappeared - all documents, settings, downloads, everything. It is a minor inconvenience for me as all my docs are duplicated on the network, however the same is not true of the other user Has anybody else experienced this? If so, is there a quick fix? I've googled the problem but can't find much information about it. These PCs have been switched off since 16th December and today (3rd Jan) is the first day they have been used since then so perhaps the PCs had a hissy fit with it being 2012?? Grasping at straws here. Other Windows 7 PC in the school don't seem to have the same problem (thank goodness).

[dsedu]

Thanks for making this thread Korova_blue. I've also encountered this problem on a few machines when I returned back to work on the 4th of January. Sadly I haven't been able to track down the problem behind this and spent the last few days recovering some data, some of it had been overwritten.

 

Our Server did unexpectedly restart around 10am on the 3rd of January, of which I need to check into why.

[pcunite]

Bizarre, are you use roaming profiles?

[korova_blue]

The profiles were a mixture of roaming and local - the information for all accounts (both domain and local users) stored under the 'users' folder of Windows 7 was lost. All that remained were the %username% folders under users, but with no subfolders underneath those folders. Thanks for posting dsedu, not wanting to have anyone else experience the pain though, I thought it was just me... I've still not been able to track down what caused the problem. On one of the PCs I was able to restore the profile information from shadow copies but on the other PC even these had been lost. For all profiles.