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Question

WHERE IS MY DESKTOP!!!!!!!!

Mar 31, 2017 1:00AM PDT

Hi, my name is chris. I was on my computer using windows 7 and I tried to type some text and the letter 'f' started entering endlessly. I tried to open something else and I opened the root directory(C:...) and somehow it had opened a .tmp file and was renaming it fffffffff... Well, to make a long story short, when I opened my user account it said it was opening a temporary desktop. So now my desktop and ALL of the things that were on it are gone, including any settings on firefox or any other apps that I had existing user specific settings on. When I open C: drive, all of the usual files are there with the addition of ffffffffffff.tmp I'm assuming that is why my desktop disappeared but I have no idea what the files original name was. Do you know what file it was or how to fix my problem? Thanks in advance...

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Re: desktop gone
Mar 31, 2017 1:18AM PDT

Not really clear what happened.
- What is "type a text ... using Windows 7". You can't type a text into Windows 7, only into some program you run.
- Then you tried to open something else. What did you try to open, how did you try it and what happened?
- Then you opened the root directory. In what program (Windows Explorer, command prompt, ...?)
- It had "opened" a file c:\ffffffffffffffff.tmp. Is that correct? What is "it" and what is "opened"?
- All the usual files are there. Usually there are very few files in the root folder, and most are hidden. The most you see are subfolders, like Program Files, Users and Windows.

Anyway, your Windows account seems corrupted. That's the only reason for opening a temporary desktop. The usual (if not only) way to handle such a situation (apart from going back to your latest image backup) is:
1. Make a new account in Control Panel (if possible from this temporary account, but if that isn't administrator, you'll have to login into your spare admin account).
2. Transfer all you need from your old account (c:\users\old_account_name) to your new account (c:\users\new_account_name).

By the way, settings for Firefox aren't on your desktop. They are in the (hidden) appdata subfolder of your c:\windows\username folder, so that's one of the things that you can copy to your new account.

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oops
Mar 31, 2017 2:46AM PDT

I was trying not to ramble on and on, my bad. Something weird was going on with my system, I The keyboard had a button that kept endlessly entering fffffffffffffffffff. I was looking at a temp file(.tmp) on my C: drive because I had never noticed it there before. I guess I double clicked on the file name causing it to rename it fffffffffff.tmp. I thought a virus was causing this and I logged off and opened an alternate user account on my system. Upon investigating I found that it was my keyboard. So I logged off and signed in as my normal user account. Windows informed me at that point that it was loading a temporary desktop because mine wasn't there - I can't remember the exact words. Anyway I checked that .tmp file and it was still named fffffffff.tmp and I assume that it is the reason for my entire profile being 'gone'.

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Re: oops
Mar 31, 2017 3:22AM PDT

Thanks for the explanation. But it doesn't change anything to the solution I suggested.