Lost files

[loanmaker]

Good morning. I am quite a new user. I had Windows 10 and on the last critical upgrade - Saturday I think - my computer crashed and I lost everything - file, apps programs - everything. Fortunately I did a lot of back ups but, I am an author and some of my working papers in OOo were not backed up. For reasons I cannot explain, after 15 hours of trying to get my computer to work again I managed to get back to Windows 8 - but everything on the computer has been lost, My Chrome and AOL accounts history is in tact but nothing else. I understand it might be possible to recover files from my previous OOo and I wonder if anyone can help me. I can log into OOo using my old log in ( computer remembered my log in details) but nothing under that log in remains.

HELP

Loanmaker

[robleyd]

You don't have to "log in" to OpenOffice; it may be that your new install ?? of OpenOffice will ask you for your name but this is not a login.

It is not clear how you rolled back to an earlier version of Windows and the process may have wiped your hard disk. I can only suggest you try the hints in [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files to see if you can recover anything from your hard drive.

[RoryOF]

The Recent Documents list in OO is merely a useful set of shortcuts to recent files. The files themselves should still be on the hard drive in the directories in which they were originally stored. If you use OO's /File /Open to navigate to those directories, when you open each file it will show on Recent Documents. If you do not know where they were stored, use the system File Search to look for files of the correct type.

Edit: It is possible that if you had to do much restoration or reinstallation to the hard disk that these files will have been overwritten, in whole or in part.

[John_Ha]

Use Windows 10 Search to search for *.odt and *.doc. This will find your files.

[loanmaker]

Thanks for taking time. I only have Windows 8 at the moment. I will upgrade to 10 but I need to find the licence key for windows 10 as my Dell came with it preloaded. Would this work with Windows 8?

[loanmaker]

You don't have to "log in" to OpenOffice; it may be that your new install ?? of OpenOffice will ask you for your name but this is not a login.

It is not clear how you rolled back to an earlier version of Windows and the process may have wiped your hard disk. I can only suggest you try the hints in [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete Writer temporary files to see if you can recover anything from your hard drive.

Sorry, of course you are correct. I used a "user name" and password and it was this which was saved.

[RoryOF]

Windows 8 will also do the search - find the files and copy them to another medium (DVD, CD, USB stick) before doing anything else.

[Bill]

While someone here might know the answers to your questions about Windows on a Dell computer, you will find more users with more answers on a Windows or Dell forum. You might also find that someone else has already asked the same questions and received answers.

A FAQ on the Dell site says that the product key is "injected" on the motherboard when Windows 8 or 10 is factory installed and the product key isn't needed by the user for activation. I doubt that the "injected" Windows 10 product key would be used to activate Windows 8, but that's a question you should be asking Windows and/or Dell.

[John_Ha]

I had Windows 10 and on the last critical upgrade - Saturday I think - my computer crashed and I lost everything - file, apps programs - everything ... after 15 hours ... I managed to get back to Windows 8

On second thoughts ...

... if it is correct that you were running W10 and that you are now running W8 then you have somehow managed to install W8 over W10, probably by following the option to repair your PC which re-installs the operating system with what was on the PC when it was delivered, namely W8.

Installing W8 has almost certainly formatted the disk (or re-installed a saved disc image), both of which cause you to lose everything on the disk. I therefore think your chances of finding any files is very poor.

You really need to have someone with PC expertise to look at your PC for you. In the meantime, you could try:

1. Search for *.odt and *.doc files as above

2. As a (very, very) long shot, use a file un-delete program (like Recuva) and search for deleted *.odt and *.doc files. You may be lucky and find some.

If neither works, I think all files are gone

[loanmaker]

search showed no files

[John_Ha]

1. Do 2. above
2. Search Google with recover data files after installing windows to find sites like How to Recover Files after Reinstalling Windows 10/8/7?

[RoryOF]

If you have printouts of the missing files, you could OCR them to avoid re-typing

.

[RoryOF]

If my memory of Dell computers is correct, they often have a Windows licence sticker on the side, giving a serial number. I think (not certain) that one may have to telephone Dell support to get an ancillary serial, quoting this serial number.