My HP PC stopped booting to Windows, so I wanted to restore it. It went through a hardware check and was then supposed to reboot. However, it said it was backing up my files and then it started restoring Windows XP and Applications. Now I cant find anything. It seems I have lost everything. Ive lost years and years worth of pictures of my kids. Ive lost uncountable years worth of writing, both creative and technical. Im going to try a file recovery service, but if that doesnt work, I dont know what Ill do. Everything is gone.
Follow-up: to reiterate, i was updating mozilla thunderbird and something glitched on my PC and i inadvertently did a system recovery (the path was ambiguous, even confusing) that
said it was backing up my data files (never [again] trust a PC to do what it says; do it yourself and verify)... turns out it didnt
restore the data files, and i couldnt find them anywhere.
i feared i had lost everything (because i had). years and years worth of digital pics of the kids and family events, years and years worth of documents ive created (including my most recent real estate investment business plan and the real estate book i wrote)... anything creative or technical or whatever is gone, baby, gone, and that aint no award winning movie i can tell you.
why so flippant? because theres a small glimmer of hope. after much snooping ive found what might be the hidden folder that contains all that data. i hope and pray to god that its there. if not, i will commit seppuku (hari kari for the layman). okay, maybe not that, but i will go on a killing spree. well, maybe not that, either, but i will go ballistic and forsake all i know and love and worship. not really. but i really do feel like punching something. last night it was the wall and the mattress. today, it might just be an HP technical support dumbass who told me "everythings gone, theres nothing you can do." I hope that *%$(*% gets fired.