Windows 8 Disaster at the login on win 8

[zabberwan]

Hello folks,

This time require your extreme help and knowledge. This has to do with my daughter's computer and her whole life is in the machine and it is messed up.
All her data was on a Win 7 computer and i offered to install windows 8.1 on it for her. So I first uploaded some of the files to my server, but they immediately started grumbling and forcing to remove the data with 48 hours or they will delete it. My daughter sent data to her drop box.

Now, I partitioned the drive to made a second primary drive to install Win 8 on it. And then as I installed it did not give me any option to choose the drive, but installed it on the previous drive with the old system on it. It gave me an option to keep my files on it.

So installed it all and all went well. I also installed MS Office . It also went well. Now it would not for what ever reason take any of my daughters MS Accounts. So i thought I will log in my MS ID and and it could started. So I went ahead and brought back all the data on it and all was almost well, but my daughter could not log in with her account and the trouble began. Eventually I continued try to make a new accounts and set it up. All I wanted was to get her a an MS account as the Administrator and User, but each time it gave new settings.

Now the problem is that I can't get back to the settings which were present on it with my MS ID. I tried to relogin with that account but it only goes to other settings etc, and all the data that that I had brought back to it is missing. iT'S GONE AND NOWHERE TO BE SEEN!

When I go to system restore and find that I can only go back to 2 days to installation of Office, but not to a point where the data was back on the computer. That data is no longer available on the server as it is was deleted after reloading back to the computer. Till a few hours back it was there, but I just don't know how to get back to the point where all the installation was intact.

At a point I changed the settings from the hotmail account (which had all the data) to my private email account and something to do with the sky drive. So much so that I can see my sky drive on her computer, but not her data anymore.

Save my life please as it is at a very crucial point of my daughters life and she cannot do without the data.

She doesn't know it as yet as she is in the other room working on a smart phone temporarily.

Regards,

Zabberwan

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

If your daughter sent her information to Dropbox it should still be there.
She should be able to log into her dropbox account from any computer that has Dropbox installed on it and retrieve it.

It says that to log into a different Microsoft account you need to open the accounts sign in page check "Forget Me" and then reboot and enter the new account email address and password to sign back in to the new account.

Hopefully someone else will have some other ideas.

I tell people this all the time, so bare with me...

Always have all your important data stored on a location other than your computer preferably more than one.

External hard drives are pretty cheap anymore, everyone should have one, copy your important data to it, turn it off, and unplug it.
When you want to use it again plug it back in and turn it on.

If it's not running it isn't wearing itself out, and it's protected from power surges viruses etc.

I should be using Carbonite or something like that myself in addition to the external hard drives I have.

Mike

 

[zabberwan]

Hello Mike,

Thank you for your input. My external drives are full so had to put some of the stuff on the server. She had already uploaded several picture folders about 25 to 30 GB to Dropbox. My server has a back up for today. Since i deleted the files yesterday, they don't show up, so I have asked them if they can give me the back up 17th or 18th and it will be there. Getting down from there should be no problem, BUT ONLY IF THEY HAVE A BACK OF THOSE DATES!!!
I am also quite frustrated why one cannot reinstate the first settings i made with on it. All those folders and all that can't just have vanished. I did not delete the account, I only changed the login from the Hotmail account to a private email/user. what is critically missing is the My Documents Folder; other files I can muster up
I hope someone on the forum does have a brainwave...

 

[badrobot]

I also don't understand why those files go missing without deleting them. Windows 8 is still quite a mystery to me so I can't recommend any thing about fixing the account problem. But since you are talking about your daughter's "life", you should probably stop playing around with it and instead use a recovery software to scan and recover the files from the hard disk where you last had them. I once deleted a partition in my hard drive by accident (or you can call it stupidity perhaps) that contains my daughters baby photos. I used Minitool Power Data Recovery ($20), scanned my hd (took about more than an hour) and I was able to recover everything the same way it was organized (in folders with original filenames) when I lost them.

 

[zabberwan]

Thank you for your advice; I will keep "Mini Power Data Recovery" in mind for future. Only problem is that when deleted and restarted over and again then a recovery tool has problems retrieving data wholesome and non-corrupted.
I'm glad in the end it all turned out fine:
1. The server could get me a copy of the deleted folders if I wanted, and
2. I also found a copy of the folders buried several layers deep in one of the existing User accounts by exploring the partitions and have copied it out of the computer now to an external drive where i arranged some place.

So I will rearrange the structure. She doesn't even know what had happened. So I promised her a new one as she hasn't had such good luck with this "Acer" which was sort of white elephant right from day 1. Mainly overheating problems. Nothing against Acer, but this machine was a bad piece.
Any ways I thank you all for taking interest in my predicament.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Two things, one, I use a search program named Agent Ransack for my search software.
It's free and it can find anything.

Just let it search for anything you can't find and if it's there it will find it.

http://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack/download

And second here is what I can find about changing the Microsoft Account Log in...

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Hi,

Thank you for posting your issue in Microsoft Community.

I understand that you have difficulty in changing your primary mail account in Windows 8.
I will definitely assist you regarding this.

To change your primary mail account you have to change the log in account to the one which you want to set it as primary account.

You have to switch the log in account to Local user account. Then switch back to Microsoft account and provide the primary Email ID to that user account.

Follow these steps:

Step 1: Switch to local user account

Follow these steps to create a “Local User account”.

a.Press “Windows key +W”.

b.Type “users” without quotes in the search box.

c.Then select “Users” from the left panel.

d.You will get an option “Switch to a Local account” right below your user account name.

e.Select “Switch to a local account” option.

f.Enter the required details.

g.Then login to the local account and check how it works.

Step 2: Switch back to Microsoft account

Follow these steps to create a “Microsoft account”.

a.Press “Windows key +W”.

b.Type “users” without quotes in the search box.

c.Then select “Users” from the left panel.

d.Select “Switch to Microsoft account” right below your user account name.

e.Enter the required details (Primary Email ID).

f.Restart the computer and then try to login using new Primary account.

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It seems like this would let you regain access to your daughters original Microsoft Account as long as you know the address and password. Even the address would probably do it since it would let you use the email to recover the password.

Mike

 

[zabberwan]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the detailed tips. I will definitely make use of these today and get things going the proper way. i will also use "agent ransack" for my other systems in the office.

Regards,

 

[badrobot]

Thank you for your advice; I will keep "Mini Power Data Recovery" in mind for future. Only problem is that when deleted and restarted over and again then a recovery tool has problems retrieving data wholesome and non-corrupted.
I'm glad in the end it all turned out fine:
1. The server could get me a copy of the deleted folders if I wanted, and
2. I also found a copy of the folders buried several layers deep in one of the existing User accounts by exploring the partitions and have copied it out of the computer now to an external drive where i arranged some place.

So I will rearrange the structure. She doesn't even know what had happened. So I promised her a new one as she hasn't had such good luck with this "Acer" which was sort of white elephant right from day 1. Mainly overheating problems. Nothing against Acer, but this machine was a bad piece.
Any ways I thank you all for taking interest in my predicament.

Great! Thanks for the update.
Yeah, just like Mike said, never rely on PC's storage and the cloud too. Personally, my PC have 4 hard drives installed but I make sure to copy my important files and photos MANUALLY to an external drive as a back-up (but I also have automatic backup setup on a separate drive).

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Like Badrobot, I'm a strong believer in copying the stuff I want to back up uncompressed to external hard drives.
I don't use a backup utility for anything except making a system image of my operating system drive.

But an automatic cloud storage of some kind for important files would be a good idea, I'm looking at Onedrive now, that I've become aware of it, which seems to be a Microsoft cloud storage utility that will give you 7 GB of free space.

7 GB of stuff isn't a lot for me, I have over 1 TB of stuff on my computer spread over 2 1 TB drives in 4 partitions.

I just looked and I have over 17 GB in my photo directory, and another 6 in my music folder, but maybe I can sort down to the really important stuff.

At some point I still have to be responsible for keeping my files backed up, by putting them in a backup location.

Mike

 

[badrobot]

Mike, the data backup is convenient if you need to restore all your data to a PC that has been restored (say, by image) instead of copying your files manually back to the PC file by file or folder by folder. The ones I copy manually are just for redundancy in case a more serious problems occurred. When I create system image, I only create the image of the OS. My data are on separate drive.

 

[zabberwan]

There is a very wonderful service that's just come up and i think it is really fantastic. I should have started with them a couple of months back, but was really busy and having bookmarked the link I'd sort of forgotten about till I just read your posts Mike and Badrobot . It just rang a bell..it's called ownCloud. Here is a very small demo you can WATCH

 

[MikeHawthorne]

I create a backup image of my C:\ drive which has most of my installed software on it.
My games are all on a second partition of the same hard drive.

All of my Graphics Arts software and related files is one separate hard drive, and then everything is backed up to 3 external drives.

And a second partition on my second hard drive holds all my pure data, like Photos, Music, Software Installation programs, personal data etc. This partition is backed up completely to 2 external drives, while only the data on my Graphic Arts partition are backed up to external drives.

I'll check out the ownCloud thing.

I could use something that backs up jobs as I work on them, this is when I'm most at risk because I don't back them up until I'm done working on them.

 

[zabberwan]

I had a system that does just that. Back up each thing as you work without you having to bother with. This was from Acronis, but boy was it buggy! Got rid of it and gave their other system a try. I have a TB external drive for backing up my private/home computers that is full to gills. It is not a free software, but okay, and after a lot of docs and toil you make your driving license! That is the major problem with a lot of software out there. Some great stuff and free, but you really have to log it to get to a point so you can work with it.
This ownCloud.org is totally free and very easy, easier than Dropbox and if you are collaborating with someone you can both work on the files in real time and save and exchange your versions and many other gimmicks. It is like working on your own system. i watched some demo's and blogs and I was much impressed. There are of course also enterprise (commercial) versions with full support and all that.

I also read about the 7 GB offer from Microsoft this morning in their newsletter, but I think it is rather miserly!