Windows 10 Everything missing and unable to access

[Flakey]

Last night I logged out and when I logged back in again all my files, tiles and everything had disappeared and I was unable to access anything, all that was left on the screen was a few original icons but nothing would open. This morning as a last resort I did a system restore and to my relief everything came back but does anyone know what would cause this? Was it a virus or something and should I be worried it's still on the laptop? Thank you.

 

[kemical]

Sounds like the machine crashed and if it's an especially bad crash then data can get corrupted. If you check the event logs you may be able to find out what happened.
Link Removed

 

[BIGBEARJEDI]

Hi flakey and welcome to the forum

Take a look at this post I just wrote this morning for another forum user here who solved his problem on his own, but I believe it will help you. Continue to look at the Event Viewer as kemical suggested and post back anything you find so we can analyze it for you.

Here's the post:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hi,
Sorry to hear you're having problems with your laptop. There are a number of things you can do to fix this. We've been seeing a lot of failures on W10 machines the last week or so since the September AU (Anniversary Update) began being pushed out to users through the Internet via Microsoft WU (Windows Update).

The most likely causes are:
1.) W10 AU update scrambling your settings, replacing device drivers, etc.
2.) Virus/malware infection
3.) Windows registry corruption due to new settings installed from the AU update
4.) Coincidental Hardware failure (Hard Drive, RAM sticks, Motherboard)

I would recommend that you FIRST BACKUP ALL OF YOUR PERSONAL DATA TO EXTERNAL MEDIA! THIS WOULD INCLUDE YOUR LIBRARY FOLDERS FOR DOCUMENTS, PHOTOS, MUSIC, VIDEOS, AND ANY SAVED E-MAILS OR ATTACHMENTS TO AVOID ANY IRRETRIEVABLE DATA LOSS!!!

Next, I would try to run a System Restore using the built-in Windows utility to "rollback" your laptop to a point in time before the problem began occurring. This is very easy to do and will get your desktop settings back and everything put back into it's place before the damage to windows happened.

If the System Restore fails, you'll have to do some hardware testing and attempt some more aggressive windows repairs in order to get your laptop running correctly again. I wrote a Troubleshooting post with step-by-step instructions on how to do this here: Windows 10 - Unclickable Task Bar.
This document is quite long, about 6-8 pages so it's best to print it out on another working computer and keep in front of you while you are testing, troubleshooting, and repairing your laptop. In most cases, it will provide you with a solution to your problem.

Don't hesitate to post back if you get stuck or have more questions along the way. Be patient, it's a process than can take from a week or more to do. We are here 24x7x365.

*If you find this solution helpful, please come back to this thread and put a LIKE on my Post to let other forum users with a similar question that my solution helped you! Thanks--

Best of luck,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

My wife's computer did the Anniversary Update last night, and that's probably what happened to your computer too.

I had to log out and back in a couple of times, to get things straight.

For a while it was booting to a black screen with a cursor, instead of the login Window.

I had to hard restart and Ctrl Alt Delete a couple of times to get the login screen to show, but it eventually came back to normal.

It seems to be working OK now after spending some time cleaning things up.

Mike