My good friend's gateway laptop did something really weird....last night she shut down her laptop and left it on the floor. today when she started it up, it was as if the computer was cleanly formatted. XP started up fine, but none of her files or programs are there. Not sure the exact specs on the laptop, i dont have it with me. I know some laptops have the option to reformat within windows rather than on a CD, so maybe something triggered that, though I am not sure if that is how her laptop is setup. Any wisdom on this subject?
cleanly reformated xp, vert strange? I think, as you suggested some how the System Restore feature took it back to when XP was first installed. If you go to System Restore are they any Restore points there?
I never heard of this kind of problem before,But being on a wireless connection, someone could of hack your pc and formatted it.Is it working ok ? I would CHECK it real good, and to a total reinstall yourself.. Run all AV and spyware software before new install.. Also keep an eye on that wireless connection for anything else strange that might happen.
It runs great, and i will definitely reformat it myself, however, all the files are gone...which absolutely blows. any suggestions as far as that goes?
This is very strange incident. I don't think that someone will hack your computer only to delete the files. It may be due to some virus (but this is also not heard about), or else somebody must have done it. There are recovery tools available. I think that such tools are capable to retrieve deleted data. Recoverable files are shown in green and others in red color. You can try those softwares.
It doesn't make sense to be a hacker or virus. She shut down her laptop before going to sleep. With the computer off there is no connection, and it's off... a virus can't do anything with the laptop off. Very strange... never heard of this before... ever.
Well, I have an old IBM laptop that if you press the right key on boot up it will re-install the OS and you have a clean machine with no trace of anything ever on it. Maybe somebody got to here laptop during the night and turned it on and hit the wrong key. Good bye data. Very bad joke!
i think it will forever be a mystery....the real question at hand now is how do i retrieve the lost data?