xp booted into a TEMP user folder?

Our work computer has recently and strangely booted into a user called TEMP, however, all docs and settings (desktop, favourites etc) were in another users area - problem is I recovered all docs and settings and placed them into this TEMP user's folder. Then after a reboot the TEMP user and it's contents disappeared with all our documents as the computer booted into the normal users area - I found some of them in the recycle bin but we are missing many of our recent docs that haven't been backed up properly by our office boy during the last backup cycle! Can I recover these lost docs? and where would they be? I'm going to try spotmau (wincare power suite) data recovery first can anyone recommend a plan B or a better solution to this problem... cheers Jeff

 

Welcome to WindowsBBS Jeff

I recommend that you not write any data to the drive until the data you wish to recover has been recovered. Anything added or changed has the potential to overwrite the area of the drive that the lost information was last stored on. Best to use a recovery program that can be run from a bootable cd. I'm not familiar with the program you mentioned but I have had great success with Easy Recovery Pro by Ontrack. I believe both Hirens BootCD and Ultimate BootCD both include Easy Recovery. Also of note, you will need another storage device attached on which to save the recovered data.

 

thanks for the timely advice Noah - I will try Hiren's Boot CD first with an external usb backup drive to extract files to... appreciate your help and will post how it goes here again soon... Jeff