Computer Deleted All My Files After Restart, How to Recover

Why did my computer delete all my files?

In fact, “computer deleted all my files after reboot” is not uncommon, and it is not quite complex to solve this problem. If you have not performed a factory reset or formatted your hard drives for your computer, there may be the following reasons for the loss of all your data.

• Your computer is infected with a virus.
• Your computer's hard drive is faulty, causing the data to not be displayed properly.
• Your computer runs down, preventing personal information from being loaded.

How to solve “my computer restarted and deleted everything”? You can follow the solutions below to recover files missing after restarting with ease.

How to recover all deleted files on computer after restart

Where do deleted computer files go? Generally, deleted Windows files/folders are moved to Recycle Bin, where removed data may be restored if required. If you cannot find your deleted computer files in Recycle Bin, chances are that the files are not erased from your computer or your files are deleted permanently.

Whatever the case may be, please try the following solutions to get back all files deleted from computer.

★Note:

Some viruses cause the computer to restart automatically and delete or hide files. Before trying the data recovery methods below, please first perform a full scan of your computer with antivirus software and remove any viruses.

Method 1. Switch user account

If all your Windows 10 files are missing after a system update or a system-related update, check if you are logging in with the correct account. Sometimes, Windows updates are followed by logging in with a temporary account or another account. In this case, you can log in to the correct account to resolve the "computer deleted all my files" problem.

Step 1. Click on Start, and right-click on the account name (or picture).

Step 2. Select the right account to sign in to it.

Method 2. Check hard drive for errors

Your computer hard drives may have malfunctioned, resulting in all files disappearing if your log-in account is correct. You can run the Windows disk check tool to scan and repair hard drive for file system errors and recover corrupted hard drive.

Step 1. Press WIN + E to open This PC, right-click the hard drive containing files you need to recover, then click Properties.

Step 2. Navigate to the Tools tab and tap on Check.

Step 3. Click Scan drive to start a full scan of your hard drive. When the hard drive scan is finished, you can view any errors that were repaired and see if the “computer has deleted all my files” is fixed.

Method 3. Recover deleted files with System Restore

If you have set a system restore point before my computer erased all my documents, you can undo the file deletion by rolling your Windows back to the previous restore point. It is worth mentioning that this method is only accessible to users who have enabled System Restore on Windows.

Step 1. Search for “Create a restore point” and open it.

Step 2. Click on System Restore and then Next.

Step 3. Choose a restore point that contains all deleted files and click Scan for affected programs to check items that will be eliminated after the restoration. Then, click Next.

Step 4. Confirm your restore point and hit Finish > Next to roll back your computer to a previous date and solve “all my files are gone on Windows 10”.

Method 4. Restore deleted data from backup

Restoring all deleted computer files from a backup is an easy approach to getting back all lost data, as long as you have created Windows backups in advance. Here we take restoring a file backup from File History as an example to show you how to recover files when the computer deleted all my files.

Step 1. Launch File History by opening Control Panel. Next, expand System and Security and select Restore your files with File History.

Step 2. A list of locations you are backing up will be displayed here. To restore a file/folder, navigate to it and select it, then press the green Restore position to restore the file/folder to its original location.

If you want to restore the item to a new path, click on the Settings button, and choose Restore to to specify a different location.

Method 5. Restore all deleted/lost files with data recovery software

In case there is neither a file backup nor a restore point, the best way to retrieve lost files from your computer is with the help of professional file recovery software.

MyRecover is a free and handy recovery tool that can help you recover data lost due to accidental deletion, hard drive formatting, system crash, partition loss, etc. It allows you to perform a comprehensive and deep scan of the storage device. The scanning process is very safe as it is a read-only process for the disk and data.

Now, let’s take a look at how to use this recovery utility to solve the “restarted my computer and everything is gone on Windows 11/10” issue.

Step 1. Download and launch this recovery tool. Hover the mouse over the drive and click Scan to scan.

★Note:

MyRecover not only supports you to local drive files, but also allows you to recover external hard drive data from USB flash drives, SD cards, memory cards, HDDs, SSDs, and so on.

Step 2. This program will start scanning for all deleted and missing files. To locate specific files, click “Search for files and folders” or “Filter” to choose the file type.

★Note:

More than 200 types of data, including documents, excels, photos, videos, audio, etc. are supported to recover in MyRecover.

Step 3. Select all the files you need, and click Recover xx files. After that, choose a location to save the recovered data.

Conclusion

What to do if my computer deleted all my files? You can first check if the deleted items are saved in Recycle Bin. If not, you can try the methods above to repair hard drive errors, restore file backups, or recover permanently deleted files without backup using the MyRecover software.

Besides, it is highly recommended that you could use an all-in-one backup software like AOMEI Backupper to create file backups, disk backups, and even system backups in regular for protection.