My desktop folders and files disappeared, where did they go after an update? My computer won't recover the documents, folders or pictures. I'm so mad!!!

Hi Kelly,

I am Dave, I will help you with this.

Most likely, you are logged into a temporary account, it is a known bug after Windows updates.

Before you do anything or move any files around

Restart (not shut down) your PC 4 times, each time let your PC get to the Desktop before the next restart, this will fix this issue a lot of the time...

Otherwise:

Please open Windows File Explorer

Navigate to C:\Users

Do you see two user folders that look like yours?

Open those folders and check inside Pictures, Documents... etc. and see if your files are there

If your files are there:

NOTE VERY IMPORTANT: Do Not copy your files into the Temporary profile you are currently in, when the situation is corrected, your files will be deleted with the Temporary Profile and will not be recoverable !!

Create a new user profile with Admin privileges

Log into the new user profile

Copy all your data from the old profile to the new profile (Documents Library, Pictures Library... etc.)

This issue is haunting lot of our users. The old fix of restoring through regedit (winnt\profilelist) doesn't help. Most folders and files under c:\users\xxxxx\ is either empty or completely missing. No trace anywhere! I would like to know the root cause of this issue as we have so many people lost files. At this point I am not sure if this is due to a windows update or hardware issue. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

For some reason my show desktop option was unchecked. Right click on the desktop and click on view. The last option 'show desktop icons' was not checked. I checked this and the desktop came back.

I don't know how the option was turned off. I did not change the settings. Info in the link below may also be useful.

https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-update-deleted-desktop/

I tried the solution to restart 4 times. The desktop items are still missing.

I went to C:\Users. I do not see 2 folder that look like mine.

I also tried rebuilding my desktop, but can't place items on the desktop.

How can I recover my desktop or rebuild it?

Thank you.

Ok so forget all the videos going into the registry editor. Once new update happens on your windows 11, they basically kick you out of Microsoft edge and cloud and google. You have to log back into same email through edge(which is the first setup when you first got the computer) after you log back in and sync all saved data, your computer will restore all settings and task bar as you had it before the update, I had to find out the hard way. But here is the solution.