C drive has reformatted - uninstigated by user

[meli1973]

Something happened to my computer last week. I am at a complete loss as to why this has occurred and am now facing the prospect that I've lost the last 3 months work.

Maybe someone out there knows why this has happened.

SYSYEM DETAILS

Windows XP Media Centre

ASUS F3JC Notebook

1 GB RAM

120 GB hardrive

OK - Here's what's happened...

1. 2am computer working fine

2. 5am computer has black screen with a bunch of text which ends in press f2 to resume

3. I press f2

4. Computer goes to setup mode

5. Prompt: Press ESC to exit without saving changes

6. I Press ESC

7. Computer reboots to login screen

8. I click my icon

9. Profile appears new ie none of my backgrounds, shortcuts etc

10. I reboot hoping it is just a weird windows thing and a reboot will help

11. Computer presents ASUS logo then black screen

12. :( what the?

13. I ring ASUS - they say WIndows UPdate failure - it's a Microsoft thing - Press f9 to run Windows recovery you've probably lost all your data

14.

15. Yep - Windows recovers but all my data from C drive is gone (.pst files + My docs etc)

16. Computer is now off at a data recovery place but they say it's a complex recovery and so far everything they've retreived is corrupt

Has any one else experienced something like this?

Have I done all the wrong things?

Love to hear if there is anything else I can do or should do differently if this happens again.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

Have I done all the wrong things?

I don't know what happened to your computer, but my suspicion is that your point 13 did the damage - "Windows recovery", back to the original Windows installation.

If you have any important data on a computer, always take regular backups - it is the only way to prevent data loss when the unexpected happens.

[andsome]

Welcome to the Windows Forum.

Have I done all the wrong things?

I don't know what happened to your computer, but my suspicion is that your point 13 did the damage - "Windows recovery", back to the original Windows installation.

If you have any important data on a computer, always take regular backups - it is the only way to prevent data loss when the unexpected happens.

Use Acronis, available at a discount to subscribers, click on the blue button above. :D

[Dencandy]

Also keeping systems and data on separate partitions (virtual disks) on the hard drive can help as well. If you lose one partition, you might at least save the other one. Until I got an external hard disk and Acronis Imaging software I also had a third partition on the internal HDD for back-ups.