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I've been stuck in this situation from a couple of hours and can't really find any solution to that issue.

Background:

  • My friend's pc (an HP computer) (with windows 10 upgraded from windows 8.1) had an issue with the motherboard, so it was sent back to HP and repaired.
  • After the repair, windows 10 resulted not activated EDIT: because, from the comments below, it may be an important detail, the pc came back with windows 10 professional instead of windows 10 home which is the reason why I had to go back to windows 8 first, because the OEM product key was a windows 8.1 home key , mostly because the activation code was changed (because it was an OEM windows 8.1).

  • 30 days were already passed so we couldn't revert windows 10 to windows 8.1, hence we downloaded 8.1 through the microsoft wizard, built the USB drive with windows 8.1, backed up the important data (you never know what will happen in your file, so..), created a new partition where we saved some steam data (mostly steam games, about 100 GB in order to don't have to download these [bought] games once again) and installed windows 8.1 by flagging keep the userdata in the windows.old folder.

    • After installing, we upgraded windows 8.1 to windows 10 (by first activating 8.1 with the new OEM key), installed the remaining drivers (just a few) but, surprisingly, the windows.old folder contains no data but windows data.

To be even clearer, the issue seems rather to be that all the folders exists (he mainly cared about program files to get back some saves and music), but they are empty.

enter image description here enter image description here What I've tried already:

  • Powershell as administrator -> search for any known file in windows.old: no success, no files apparently found.
  • Powershell: enabled administrator user and logged in as administrator. Files seems still to be missing.
  • Tried with RECUVA: no .mp3 found to restore (which brings me to believe that they still exists).
  • Tried to use the windows tool for recovering windows.old files: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/restore-files-upgrade-windows-old No success, the process says that the files are either protected or already recovered.
  • Tried to check in any drive position if there was any file with the mp3 format: none found but the ones from the 22/02/2016 (today).

The windows.old folder weights about 14 GBs (which is not that much), while it should be more than 100-200 GBs, mostly because the STEAM folder was about 100GBs, so considering that there were about 56 GBs of pictures (luckily backupped on an external hard drive) it should be weighting way more than that.

Also, the windows.old folder, under %programfiles%, seems to be missing every user's installed software, it looks like they are either empty or just deleted for some unknown reasons.

Am I losing something or what? some seems to have experienced something similar here: http://forums.windowscentral.com/windows-10/373425-did-windows-10-upgrade-i-lost-all-my-data-files-music-pictures-documents-etc-how-can-i-get-them-back.html but none of the solutions provided here solved my problems.

Moreover, what a surprise, the windows partition weights 157 Gbs (after importing the STEAM folder with 100GBs of data from the backup), is windows hiding windows.old folder files or..?

enter image description here

Thanks.

Journeyman Geek
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briosheje
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  • No Cleanup Tool was run, I was there when we formatted, hence this can either be an update (or upgrade problem) or something else. Is there any chance to recover these files or should we just move on? The fact that these cannot even be seen by recuva made me believe that they existed **somewhere** in the partition, but I'm surprisingly astonished about the fact that they seems to be all either disappeared or impossible to see. – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 16:58
  • @Ramhound : I've followed the wizard of the windows 8.1 installer, we didn't format the drive (sorry, by format above I meant revert), just went back from windows 10 to windows 8.1 using this: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/windows-10-recovery-options (followed "Go back to your previous version of windows"). Hence the drive was not formatted, which is likely why windows asked us to keep all the userdata in the windows.old folder as far as I know, right? – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 17:05
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    Windows 10 upgrade does not save user data in `Windows.old`: it uses this directory for programs, system files and registries from the previous system, particularly programs removed during the upgrade. It does allow user data to be preserved, but these are kept in place. If they are lost and recovery tools don't find them, your only option is to restore from back-up. – AFH Feb 22 '16 at 17:08
  • @Ramhound: The pc was sent back through the warranty service and the invoice received is labeled by HP. That said, we rolled back after 30 days (because it was the only choice available) by following the last step of the link above: created the USB drive and followed the install wizard of windows 8.1, choosing the same partition of the current windows 10 and flagging to keep the old files in the windows.old folder – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 17:10
  • @AFH : The data was supposed to be saved when going back from windows 10 to windows 8.1, I was not expecting program files data to be saved in windows.old, but I surely was expecting to find pictures and documents there. If we don't have a windows back-up have we got any chance to recover this data? I'm quite confused: was it deleted or what? – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 17:12
  • Sounds like Windows ignore the setting for whatever reason. Just restore from the backup you took. – Ramhound Feb 22 '16 at 17:59
  • @Ramhound: I've already done such, the question (as above) is whether the files are hidden or deleted, that's why I've asked the question here. – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 18:01
  • You've done a number of upgrades, downgrades and re-installations: any one of these could have lost your user data if you failed to request that be kept. Indeed one of them might not have given you the option, depending on what installation method was used. – AFH Feb 22 '16 at 18:05
  • @AFH : so if the files were available before downgrading (because after downgrading they weren't there) the problem probably occurred there? – briosheje Feb 22 '16 at 18:14
  • Reinstall W8 using your HP recovery media, then upgrade to w10. – Moab Feb 22 '16 at 18:24
  • Yes, except that I would not have expected it in a down-grade, which should preserve everything as a matter of course. It's more likely to have been while the machine was in repair and out of your hands. Why the OS was changed is inexplicable: if the motherboard (where the licence resides) was replaced then your existing installation would need to be relicensed unless the licence code was transferred. My (fading) recollection of W8.1 upgrades is that the option to preserve user data made no mention of `Windows.old`: when I used it the `Users` directory was preserved in its original place. – AFH Feb 22 '16 at 22:46

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