Windows 10 1809 update deleted all files from Documents!

Anonymous
2018-10-04T19:09:32+00:00

Last night I updated to 1809, and it all went smoothly, but then I find that all my files in Documents are DELETED. Gone. Poof. This included many crucial documents and financial info. Yes, I have a backup (I think - using Windows Backup to a NAS). But this is pretty bad. Did no one in the first two rings run into this yet?

I understand (from the news) that this happens to all files in Documents that aren't synced to OneDrive. Further, the Documents folder is really an agglomeration of "Documents" from several different paths - not sure how that works, and it may or may not relate.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Neil D 34,280 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-08T14:31:48+00:00

    What happens when you try Fix me.

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  2. Neil D 34,280 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-08T14:30:13+00:00

    MS recommend a roll back to the previous version at the moment, so you did the right thing.

    If you should get offered the Feature update again and are not happy to try it then you can try to block it using

    https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/stopupdates10.html

    this may be a good time to consider backups for you important files.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-10-08T14:18:26+00:00

    I updated to 1809 at the weekend and then went into shock. Not only my documents had disappeared but all the photographs and music was gone too.  The folders were showing as empty.

    The only thing I could think to help was go back to a previous version of Windows 10 and to my utter relief all of my files were there. Panic over but a great shock when you have so much information 'lost'.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-10-08T03:05:33+00:00

    Yup, the exact same happened to me. I had just finished work on my music projects and ready to export all of them but windows keep bugging me on updating every 30 minutes. I went on to update it waited a good long while then when I loaded up my music program it said no files where found. So, I checked the Quick Access for the folder and it said Directory Not Found. Then went to my User folder and "My Documents" was gone. I checked OneDrive, nope. Check my File History backup, nope deleted from there too. I did a system restore, nope. Then the run a few data recovery programs and none of them found a trace of it. I went to check on my videos and some of them where missing and one was deleted right before my eyes. And a lot of programs started missing file. So I reinstalled windows and now it's working fine but I'm not updating it any time soon.

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  5. Neil D 34,280 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2018-10-06T22:52:38+00:00

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