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Question

Disabled Win 8 password, lost desktop tiles & documents

by Apr 16, 2014 1:28AM PDT

I recently helped a friend turn off the login password on her Windows 8.1, HP laptop. The next time she went to turn it on, all the normal tiles from the Start Screen were gone with the exception of five tiles: IE, File Explorer, Store, SkyDrive and Desktop.
The File Explorer icon opens a folder showing the various libraries and devices/drivers. When she clicks on the Documents folder it doesn't show any of her files. I did eventually find them by going to her name in the Users folder, but we cannot understand why simply taking away the requirement for a login password would change everything. All her browser favorites were also wiped out, and she had to reinstall Chrome. I'm not a Windows 8 person (nor am I any kind of trained anybody...just someone trying to help a friend), so I'm not sure how to restore everything. Please help...

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4 Posts
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Answer
If I were to bet
by Forum moderator Apr 16, 2014 1:32AM PDT

If hey logged into some other account. Log out and try the other accounts.

And as the moderators chant, you hear it again.
"We only lose what we don't backup."
Bob

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Answer
No backup? Lesson learned?
by Apr 16, 2014 1:39AM PDT

If she didn't have backup, maybe the school of hard knocks has taught why she needs to. You can buy a 1 TB external hard drive for around $70 and there're plenty of good free backup software packages. I use the free Easeus Todo Backup Free. CNET has a lot of backup program reviews at
http://download.cnet.com/windows/backup-software/?tag=contentBody;sideBar .

Some of these are free (last time I checked there were over 300), some have free trials (over 1000), and some are purchase only (over 200).
`
Good luck.

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Answer
What you have to do is go to the folder
by Apr 17, 2014 10:07PM PDT

where all the users accounts are. In XP it's under documents and settings. There should be a folder with the name of the old account (those are called profiles). Under the folder with the account are a few sub folders one is called desktop that's is where your shortcuts are stored. There's also a folder for favorites where you IE favorites are stored. Where I work if we have multiple users using a PC we put some of the shortcuts in the desktop folder under All users.

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Answer
To elaborate what I said this is done
by Apr 17, 2014 10:12PM PDT

by Windows purposely in order to have multi-users. These are called profiles like I said. It stores specific setup data for each account that uses the PC. Some time these profile become corrupt and if you delete the folder it recreates itself. Typically when we do that here at work we copy the favorites and desktop folder out and read them when the new profile is created. So each time a new account logs in it creates this setup for that account.

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