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palcal

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Joined: 12/10/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 2055

Posted: 10:29pm 12 Nov 2026

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I recently installed this update ( 26H2 ) on a Laptop I share with my daughter and all her files have disappeared. My Desktop and files are OK but her Desktop is gone, replaced with a black screen and some of the icons from my desktop.
I have searched everywhere, I found some of her Pictures but documents and everything else is gone.
I went to One Drive and it took over 12 hours to sync, I think all the files were gone and it reloaded them from the computer.
A complete stuff up.
Edited 2026-11-13 08:29 by palcal

"It is better to be ignorant and ask a stupid question than to be plain Stupid and not ask at all"

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 10111

Posted: 10:58pm 12 Nov 2026

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These daze when it comes to Windoze updates, I would never let one proceed without first having done a full backup to the cloud or an external drive - or both.

The number of things that Windoze Update seems to screw up, seems to be getting worse all the time. This is one of the more horrific stories I have heard though - update should NEVER screw with the user's files, it's only supposed to be updating the SYSTEM.

I wonder if anyone else has had that problem - might ask Mr. Google, cos I would be surprised if you were the only one.

EDIT: After a quick search around the net, it appears that 26H2 deleting personal files is a VERY common problem, and has happened to A-LOT of people. It seems that MOSTLY, the update moves the files to the recycle bin, so you can recover them from there, but not always.

Why a Windoze update should EVER need to delete personal user files, is beyond me. Perhaps part of the update, does some kind of virus or malware scan, and the user's personal files are tagged as false-positives so they get deleted or something like that, but whatever the reason, this is VERY odd behaviour for an UPDATE.

Move this laptop to Linux Mint or other Linux distro you like, and be done with Windoze and MS. If your daughter is reluctant to move off of Windoze, use this very event as leverage, cos you won't see this kind of BS under Linux, and you can do updates as and when YOU feel like it, not just when the OS feels like it.
Edited 2026-11-13 09:10 by Grogster

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

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