How do I get my computer back!

First, what do you mean by gone? Do you mean that the programs start fine but that all your data are missing? Can you see the directories where the data used to be? Do you have an external drive that is perhaps not being read properly? Have you looked in directories (folders) to see what’s still in there and what is gone? Have you run FDISK to see if there are problems with the indices on the hard drive? If you look in Windows Help you can learn how to do this.

If your data are really lost, and not just temporarily misplaced, the main thing to do is to download a program that can recover data. It is important, however that you save it to a thumb drive, or at least to a disk other than the one which holds the data you wish to recover. That way you won’t be overwriting any of the lost material. Then run the program, and it should eventually (it may take a long time) show you a list of recoverable files, and offer to restore them for you. Good luck. I hope it’s something trivial.

I would recommend following pdworkin’s advice and not installing or saving any programs/data/etc to your hard drive.

Stupid question: Are you sure no one tampered with your computer while you were gone?

Having a recent Dell and experiencing multiple problems, I would tend to suspect it was the updates myself. One update prevented me from accessing the internet so I had to roll the registry back to an earlier state.

You might consider rolling your computer back to a date before the updates and see if your files magically re-appear. If they do, then copy them to an external drive, and then allow the updates again.

@Darwin has a great point. do you know how to do a system restore? You can also look that up in the help files. It’s not hard, it’s not too scary, and it should put things back the way they were before the updates.

Start menu
Help and support center
pick a task
System restore

Hold on. Don’t do anything until you’ve thoroughly explained the situation to someone who can understand it and you have listened carefully and answered questions.

You might have to consult a recovery professional. But the first thing is, don’t go messing with whatever you’ve got unless you know what you’re doing, or you could just make it worse.

Do you have more than 1 user account on the PC? If so are you positively logged into the correct account? BTW a system restore won’t help you here unless your profile was damaged system restore only affect system files not documents, pictures, music, etc…

I’ve had this happen several times at my work, where the user will login to the wrong account and wonder why all of there stuff is gone.

@pdworkin I don’t have an external hard drive, and if I can get my stuff back I’m definitely going to buy one. Basically I turned on my computer and it was all set back to the default of my school (I bought a specific computer that my school supports. I realized the settings reset becasue my background was a picture of my library and not what I put up). My documents, pictures, and music files were empty and Itunes reinstalled when I clicked on it.
@Darwin I agree, if I was good with technology I wouldn’t have bought the dell but my school has a whole team designated to fixing and supporting this 1 kind of computer. Then again if I was good with technology this wouldn’t have happened I suppose- I’m blaming the updates.
@Zendo I’ve heard from a few people that that works but how do I know my stuff has saved to this backup place? and I’m definitely the only user @limeaide

When @limeaide talks about users, he doesn’t mean who has access to your computer, he means which “Users” appear when you check the User Accounts from control panel. This may be, he is suggesting, as simple as logging out and then logging in again as yourself using Start…Switch User. (I hope you don’t mind my having put words in your mouth @limeaide.

@pdworkin Definitely don’t mind, you clarified well. Anything that will help get a solution the better. Thanks!