Computer has completely wiped itself - Help!!

[KidsBeeHappy]

I need help.

We moved house/office etc on Monday. On Tuesday the computers were set up in the new property. All and everything working perfectly, exactly the same as normal.

At half past six last night my husbands computer has completely wiped itself, lost all installed programs, all documents, all pictures, everything. The whole caboodle.

What would cause this?

Is there any hope????

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Do not turn it on again but take it to a specialist repair shop. There will be a strong chance that the hard drive can still hold the data and its just a wire or board that has come out or broken , but if its a virus then better to leave to the experts rather than keep on turning it off and on and spreading the virus damage

 

[Attaintm]

Are you saying the PC turns on but none of the original files are there or that it is completely dead (no operating system etc)?

Could be that the hard drive connections have come loose during the move

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Are you saying the PC turns on but none of the original files are there or that it is completely dead (no operating system etc)?

Could be that the hard drive connections have come loose during the move

It turns on.
Its back to the windows (xp) operating system - just like a clean reinstall.

However it has retained network settings (??)

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Is there a virus that sits over the top of your system?

Reason I ask is that the email received alert is still sounding, and outlook is used for email. However, on the profile (the "new" wiped one) there is no outlook program.

Also, text looks a bit smaller than normal settings.

When the PC shut off last night it did 18 windows updates - which if real, suggests that it was back to a previous version of XP.

It has also wiped all system resores before 6pm yesterday.

 

[RemoteTechs]

There are types of Malware and viruses that can hide your files and folders, although normally they come with other symptoms we recently blogged about the Windows 7 Restore Malware that does this, its possible that you might have an infection, do you have any antivirus?

If your able to connect to the internet you can try our Free computer health check and we can take a look for you to help figure out whats going on! :|

 

[mit74]

put your folder settings to view all hidden files, folders and drives. Some malware puts your user account as hidden so you can't see the doucments etc. Using a malware scanner will get the virus but won't change your folders back to 'unhidden'.

 

[RemoteTechs]

put your folder settings to view all hidden files, folders and drives. Some malware puts your user account as hidden so you can't see the doucments etc. Using a malware scanner will get the virus but won't change your folders back to 'unhidden'.

True but normally you won't be able to change the file and folder view with the infection present and running, it will not allow you to, if its a malware or virus behind this issue.
Also you'll probably need to change all of the file associations back to default to get anything running, We use a script for this, as manually it can take ages (when infected)

 

[FrankCott]

I cant remember correctly but there is some software can restore files from even a formatted hard drive. If you search around with google I think there will appear some thread about this matter. But if there is important information inside the hard drive then I suggest go to specialist rather than try it yourself.

 

[JElder]

Not something really basic like logging in with a different user account?

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

It was a corrupted windows profile. But it was one drama too many for that base unit, which now resides ontop of a bonfire in the field. Gone past the point where I trust anything that that computer ever told me.

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Did you save the information on the drive

 

[KidsBeeHappy]

Hubby had done a complete backup at 9.05am that morning. Most impressed

 

[wieser_software_ltd]

Turns out they clicked on a fake malware scan that hid all the files.

We managed to recover the files, and luckily had done a backup of all the important data a week before, so hadn't lost much.

However, we didn't trust the machine any longer, and as a result, took the oppoortunity to update from XP to a W7 machine. Eventually, we'll reformat the old one and scrap it, when we're sure there's nothing else of importance on it.