# My Computer Wiped EVERYTHING, help?



## brok3n (Jun 21, 2011)

My sister has a computer she's had for four years. One day she tells me that something is wrong with it and so I took a look. I turned it on and simply tried to hit the start menu button and the computer froze and came up with a blue screen and turned off the computer. I'm not much of a computer person unless it comes to internet websites so I was unsure of what was going on. The next time we go to look at the computer to see if it works everything was gone off the computer.. What I mean is that when she logged on everything that used to be on the desktop had been removed. All her pictures, all her music, even all the programs that originally comes with all computers like "Paint" and what not. There was just nothing left on her computer. No where to be found. EXCEPT! If you looked in the recylce bin there were a few things she had recently deleted before anything went wrong with her computer. And her desktop background was still what she had had it. But there were no icons anywhere, and no pictures no documents nothing! I went into the "uninstall a program" tab in control panel and in the list were still all programs on her computer. However they were no where to be found, not even in search. 

She uses this computer for college and we have no idea how to get recent documents that have been wiped off the computer. She doesn't exactly have enough money to be buying a new computer for school but she can't use this one as something seems to have happened. 

If ANYBODY has ANY idea on how to fix this (cheap would be nice), please give me some advice. Thanks!


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## Jay_JWLH (Apr 30, 2008)

Give the computer a restart or two. If you are lucky, a problem like that is only intermittent, and restarting your computer will help Windows realise where everything is to put itself together. If you have a startup repair disk, restart your computer and boot off that. It will check your Windows instillation to see if there is any problems, at least startup problems anyway.

Besides something like that, there is two concerns. The first is the fact that you dealt with a blue screen, the second is recovering the information off the hard drive in case the files don't return or the hard drive is failing.

If it happens again, take note of the error message on the blue screen. Follow the instructions in this link if you have to, to prevent the computer from restarting each time the blue screen happens.

Now back to the data and hard drive. If possible, get a backup of those files as soon as you can, just in case things get worse. You can either take a copy of the individual files, or if possible, a full backup of the computer using something like Drive Image XML (I like the program because it lets you extract files out of your backup). If the computer just stops working properly, then you may have to take the hard drive out of the computer, and attach it as a secondary device to another computer to extract the data. You can use a program like Recuva if you need to, which is a data recovery program (but doesn't recover data in all situations, usually just files that you delete or have lost).


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

PC Specs?
Prebuilt- Brand & Model Number.
Custom Build- Brand & Model of Mobo-CPU-Hdd-RAM-GPU-PSU.
You can try doing a System Restore to a time before the problem. 
To extract any data, slave the Hdd to another PC or use an external Hdd housing and connect it to another PC.
A 4 yr. old PC, especially an OEM, is a good candidate for parts failure.


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