please help, all my files are gone after system restore

my computer shut down in safe mode somehow and when it rebooted all my settings and files,pics, etc was gone, my computer was back to factory settings and ive lost evrything all my school work, family pics,everything, i have a emachines computer and its running windows xp, i went to a forum and someone came me instuctions and i saw my files and the memory it was taking up and the files were moving from a folder to another folder so i know they're still on the harddrive, can anyone please help me, i have college classes ending in two weeks and i need my work for a presentation so i dont fail, i dont have alot of money to pay for different downloads can anyone help, if you need my email , i will send,thank you

 

It sounds like you are in a bind & ,unfortunatky, it may not get better.

It sounds like a system restore was accidently done.

Try this,
Open My Computer
Doble click the C drive to open it
[make it show folders/files if neccessary]
Open Documents & settings
If open the different users folders & then My Documents & see if you get lucky & find your stuff.

If not the only other suggestion I have is download REST2514 ,

http://www.win-freeware.com/REST2514.htm

and see if you can salvage your school work at least.
I've had pretty good luck with REST2514 & it's free .

I know what you are going through.
One of my nieces was taking a online college course & her hard drive quit working.
She lost all she had & stayed up almost all night for over 2 weeks redoing lost work .

 

:confusedHELP same here lost all my favs and desktop items after putting sommethink on pc to try and get rid of junk email,doing my head in tried everthink to get them back and been told i cant,has this file scavenger worked,how do you put the files you want back on your pc? hope someone can help me as i lost all my photos as well and bt backup not working ,dont seem fair does it?:cry help please voodoo

 

My HTML editor on a WIndows7 laptop that is NOT onilne stopped working.

So I used a "System Restore" to go back to a time when it was working. I was NOT is Safe Mode, so according to the note on System Restore the process SHOULD BE reversible.

Then the editor worked, but all my recent *.js files were GONE!!! DAYS of work (sure I know about backing up but I was on a roll and ...)

So I tried returning to the point before the restore.

The report was that it was successful and that no documents had been afected, but the js files are still missing. If it was going to be possible to undo the restore, the files must be stored someplace. A search for *.js didn't find them.

Can anyone tell me how to find them?? (I HOPE - PLEASE be able to tell me they're not erased.)

TIA

PS: I ran the REST program but it didn't find them.

 

I don't think you'll have any more luck than searching in explorer but you could try SpaceSniffer and in the window with the graphs use the filter option to filter by *.js to see which files it finds.

**
If you've already undone the restore, I don't think there is much more you can do. Recuva is a free file recovery program that is newer than Restoration (the program you tried). It might be worth a try.

 

SOLUTION: Shadow Explorer 8

Someplace I found a reference to the software named in the Title.

Free download at

http://www.shadowexplorer.com/

I put it on a flash drive, expanded it ON THE DRIVE, plugged it in to the laptop, and ... no instructions.

But with a little thought I set the date window (dropdown menu) to the last date when the files should have been in place, then navigated (standard left-frame type nav) to the folder where they were and VOILA! they're all listed.

Couldn't click-and-drag them to the flash drive, but found "export" (perhaps the only menu item under "File"), set the destination to the flash drive, and the copy was as expected.

ALL files are back!

Apparently System Restore makes "shadow copies" of removed files and stores them where even the most inclusive search (with Win 7 Home's installed software) won't see them.

Shadow Explorer is the answer.

 

Thanks for posting back with the solution. I'm glad you recovered your files and will have to remember Shadow Explorer as a recovery option.

Good work!