Users reporting lost files after Windows 10 1809 Upgrade
Microsoft has started to rollout version 1809 to public from 2nd October 2018. Unlike the earlier version release, this build was released to the public in a bit of rush-Like Skipping the release preview ring and pushing it Directly to production ring. Right now, 1809 is in a seeker only mode-If you click check for updates the update would start downloading for you. The bugs were expected as I feel the QA testing was not done as like earlier builds and we are seeing the outcomes.
Small Bugs
Users are reporting many different kinds of bugs-like connectivity issues to failure during updates. But the biggest one being files lost after the upgrade. The affected users report that all the user directories like Pictures, Documents etc being empty after the update. This is a somewhat major bug, as the data would probably be important to the user. After all, we all use PC to convert data into information.
What to do if Files are lost
If you are one of the unfortunate users whose files have been lost, there are many possibilities in the scenario. Thanks to Greg Camarack, Microsoft MVP, I discuss them one by one in detail.
- You are logged in a temporary account: It is quite possible that the upgrade logged you into a temporary account. If there is a message for the same, check your files in the following two folders:
- C:/Windows.old/Users/<Your username>
- C:/Users/<Your username>
If you are logged in a temporary account, do not move your files to the current temporary account. They would be lost forever. Instead, create a new user account and move everything over there.
- You might have Files on demand Enabled: The cloud service of Microsoft Onedrive, is integrated into Windows 10. If you have chosen to keep Files only on Onedrive, it might take a while to sync the data from the cloud to your device. If it is set to off, the data might not sync. Open Onedrive icon>Settings>check if the checkbox Cloud only is selected.
- Do a Keyword search of the files and see if they are not anywhere else.
- Lastly if nothing helped, You would have to use a 3rd Party tool like Recuva which would recover most of the files. This is the most effective method which has helped most of the users. Recuva is a free tool that allows you to recover Deleted files. To download the Recuva, Go to the page below:
This is very unfortunate though that files are being deleted. Microsoft and I have not able to decode any similar pattern in this as of now. If your files are deleted and you want to help, please file a feedback in Feedback hub so that Microsoft can look into this. Please post the feedback Hub link in comments.