One drive has messed up my whole PC. How do I get my files back on my PC, and switch off one drive forever. (Please dont answer a question I did not ask)?

I feel your pain. I am so upset I have wasted hours messing about and I still don't think I have got all my files back, but I just gave up and turned one drive off - forever. Shame on you Microsoft, I agree we are being duped to pay more money in the hope that increasing storage or manoeuvring space will allow us to get back our files which we have spent a lot of time and effort into creating and organising. I think we deserve compensation for daylight robbery!

Where is a support phone number?

My files are being destroyed as I type. Why can I not find ANYTHING on line giving me someone to speak to about it?

One drive is a hot mess as is the AI forced on me every time I open windows. I turn around. Even though I paid for my own MS Office you also started putting ads in front of my email every time I opened Outlook and so I downloaded and installed Libre Office and Thunderbird for email. No commercials no forced AI. And it just works. I have several touchscreen new computers and two that use Windows 10 that you won't allow to upgrade to Windows 11 because they were a year before your arbitrary limits to upgrade to 11. One is an i7 8700T/1TB M.2 drive Dell AIOs I upgraded to 32GB RAM. I have had enough and will find good info on how to cut Co-Pilot, One Drive, and Windows from my system and then the same goes for Google cloud BS of my phone and computer files. Did y'all know that Google will still keep your data amount count even if you delete all your iles? If you have 100GB of data on google backu7p and delete them you still have 100GB against your account? And the only way to start over is to delete your Google account? I have drive docks and about 30GB of SSDs and a few 2GB and 3GB HDDs for storage. I have no use for One Drive et al.

The worst is here on the Microsoft community where amateurs post as if they know and are at best obtuse and give poor or nonsense directions as here in this thread. They never actually did it because they would then risk their own data but look it up and pass along garbage answers. I am not picking on anyone. I still have two computers with an error in trying to download a Windows security update that requires me to do some serious work in the Registry. How did they justify that screw-up and not rewrite the updates to fit or provide an automated tool to expand the size of our backup folders?????? That is not even scratching the surface of my three Surface Pro tablets with LTE and my two Surface Boos a Book and Book 3 one of which can't be upgraded to 11 either and loses security updates, as my two windows 11 systems that cannot successfully update a security update for more then a few months now with no fix.

Microsoft is getting more and more like Apple OS' under Jobs. who pretended all was well and they just work which they did not for a great percentage of their users who thought it was their fault because once the news cycle was over they denied any hardware or software flaws and vulnerabilities to attack.

I am going to try Linux Mint with the Cinnamon UI on my Dell i7 AIO and MY Surface Book i7 that is not allowed to upgrade, and if I can get it to work with my touchscreen systems will get rid of Microsoft completely, then try Linux on my Surface Tablets and move them over too.. As well I just bought an Android tablet The Galaxy Tab S9 FE just try it, as my Amazon Fire Tablets do not allow the Play store. My phone is a Pixel 8 Pro so that will be in line since Microsoft axed their Windows phones right after we bought two Lumia 710s.

So I will try Linux and Chrome OS on my ineligible to upgrade to 11 machines that are current and powerful, and on one of my Surface Pro tablets. I f I can get them to run smoothly I can bail on Microsoft completely, as they did on me and my 2017 and 2018 i7 machines, phones, and security updates on my Windows 11 machines!!!

I too just wanted to get rid of OneDrive and Microsoft, I think intentionally, makes that a dangerous endeavor and unclear on how, or even if that is possible to do safely. I have been doping Microsoft PCs since 1981 when they first came out, DOS and then DRDOS then back to MSDOS then Windows 3.1/Windows 95 and MS Office 95 in the USAF and doing IT work for my squadron and keeping up at home. If I am having issues it has indeed gotten very bad with MS and might be intentionally to boot.

Thank you all for your responses. I feel the frustrations! I haven't even been able to deal with sorting it out completely as too stressful and already spent a night sorting my work laptop which had suddenly filled with my PC desktop files as One Drive decided to snatch and grab all my personal files.

A good idea as mentioned above to use an external hard drive going forward. I will go and find the one i have somewhere and sort this. Ive had to prepare myself to do it over the summer. Not impressed!

I sympathise completely. I've just gone five weeks messing about retrieving and then suddenly losing files.
Oh yes, I eventually find file folders and download them, that's as long as I don't encounter 'errors' I had no idea about.
It will come as no surprise to many that on accessing my 'recovered' data that on opening the folder I'm met with 'this folder is empty'!
By the grace of heaven I had old files on Google Drive, but as of today I'm still missing a bundle of stuff and what I do have seems to be all over the place.
Even my external drive, which I'd relied on for years got wiped!
When Microsoft offered its OneDrive storage I assumed synching meant that as I saved to my local discs ONLY a copy would automatically be saved to the cloud. NOWHERE was it made unmissably clear that the moment you clicked 'synch', all your organised files on your device would disappear!
It's been a nightmare! The glitches have been endless, even to the point of trying to create backups, to frustratingly wait for them to reach near completion after several hours, only to be smugly informed of file history problems or certain parameters not being met so unfortunately the long awaited backup failed. "Try again".
I couldn't even quantify how many image and video files are completely gone! I also lost a bundle to a ransomware attack in the cloud would you believe!
I'm finally starting to collate most of my retrieved stuff, but no thanks to previously thinking I'd finally succeeded in getting most of my stuff back together only to find next day that turning OneDrive back on caused most of the newly reorganised local files to disappear again even though I assumed I'd stopped it synching!
I've now bought a 2 Terra external drive and a shadow maker to copy and store everything safely out of Microsoft's reach.
The irony here, is that this all began because I was trying to create back ups to the cloud due to system restore failing on me several times as well as my attempts at creating or utilising a local back up using the windows backup consistently incurring problems.
I wish I'd never heard of OneDrive. Yes over the years I've met with problems, but I always recovered and had my own externally saved data to fall back on.
Now, even my traditional Office seems to have disappeared. When I try to find and open Word, instead I'm being ushered into 365, which incidentally it appears I subscribed to when I paid to have a larger amount of storage space.

Why we can't just be left alone with what's always worked fine for our needs and is what we've become familiar with? Experiencing these companies all over us under the guise of assisting and facilitating an improved experience doesn't bode so well for the future.

Seems to me that the more they introduce and "innovate", the less I enjoy working and engaging online.
As soon as you fix one thing it always seems to require additional esoteric knowledge to avoid something else causing unexpected problems.

In conclusion, my advice?

Bugger the additional expense, get yourself a decent sized external drive to backup to. Keep it up to date and physically on hand and under your sole and personal control.

Let them keep their Cloud for government and their corporate buddies.

For years we got by just fine without it, or their increasingly intrusive practices.