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 can't tell you how much I hate One Drive. I hate it almost as much as I hate AT&T. You couldn't find a name for the One Drive Desktop other than calling it Desktop? Do you know how confusing that is? Even AI is smart enough to figure that out. Fire whoever designed the UI. Absolute garbage. You have cost me so much time.

I have the same issue...

What a mess MS and Onedrive have created. Worst thing Ive EVER come across from MS.

LEAVE MY FILES ALONE .....!!!

OH, AND LEAVE MY PRINTER SETTING ALONE!!!

MS HAS GONE WAYYYYYUY DOWNHILL IN RECENT YEARS!!!

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.

Backup my files to the cloud? More like harass me for a subscription fee otherwise it **** up my entire filetree by adding a bunch of shortcuts and moving files around if i try and disable it because i don't want to pay a monthly fee to access MY FILES. How is this even **** legal?

I have the same issue. Opted to turn on one-drive backups for Music and Pictures, and now my itunes library is showing as empty and my pictures library is empty.

Far be it from me to instruct Microsoft on basic IT terms, but 'backup' means taking a copy of source files and storing them somewhere securely in case emergency retrieval is required. It does NOT imply MOVING them from their source location to another. Microsoft should really be clearer on the implications of switching on this process.